Editor’s Note, 11/27/23: The original post on Reddit appears to have been removed by moderators, but the comments from Reddit users remain.
A 24-year-old woman asked on Reddit if she is the ‘a**hole’ for refusing to be a surrogate for her lesbian mothers, both age 67, who adopted her at age 14. The overwhelming response has been that she is not the ‘a**hole.’
According to the Daily Mail, she explained that she was adopted as a young teenager by the women and that she felt close to them. But when she turned 21, they began “pushing the idea on me as a joke at first of having their next kid to raise by themselves with me out of the picture since no adoption centers would allow them to adopt any kids due to their age and one of my mother’s jail time.”
She said she never thought the “jokes” were funny and repeatedly told them she would not be their surrogate.
Now, three years later, they continue to ask her. At a recent dinner at their house, the women again asked their adopted daughter to be a surrogate. This time they showed her baby clothes and told her how badly they wanted a baby.
“I laughed it off,” she wrote. But then they sat her down and continued to put on the pressure, offering to “pay completely.”
“I flat out disagreed in disgust saying that [it] was gross and left with them calling and yelling at me saying I was in the wrong and they did so much for me,” she said.
READ: International experts call for worldwide abolition of surrogacy
Commenters agreed with her that it was inappropriate and that the women were in the wrong. Some even questioned their motives behind adopting her.
“Are you sure your parents [didn’t] just adopt you so they could have a cheaper option to get a fresh new baby eventually?” asked one.
Another asked, “So, they adopted you at 14 so that you could make [them] a baby once you turned old enough? They are treating you as a breeding animal, like a dog. This is so creepy and wrong.”
The rising popularity of surrogacy and the monetary compensation associated with it has done exactly that. It has helped build a class of breeders. Women’s bodies are now literally being used to create offspring for those who can afford to rent their wombs. In this case, it appears that the women believed their adopted daughter owed them the use of her body so that they could create the child they wanted. And they tried to guilt her into it.
Their offer to pay their adopted daughter for the use of her uterus points to the extremely exploitative nature of surrogacy, in which impoverished women sell the use of their wombs to the wealthy elite. When the baby isn’t “perfect,” the intended parents may attempt to force the surrogate to abort the child.
Olivia Auriol was born via a surrogate and now speaks out against the practice, saying, “People just think that it’s a beautiful little butterfly world where everything goes right and that love is sufficient and that the child will grow up and everything will be fine, but, no, no. Not everything will be fine. We’re using wombs, we’re paying for women’s uteruses, we’re buying children.”
Beyond being used for her body, surrogacy comes with increased risks to the surrogate mother. Surrogates have higher rates of preeclampsia, gestational diabetes, preterm birth, postpartum depression, and chronic illness than women who are carrying their own children. Many of these risks extend to the baby and cause him or her health issues as well, in addition to the trauma the children suffer by being separated at birth from the only mother they have known.
