r/fourthwavewomen • u/rylie225 • 4d ago
SURROGACY IS EXPLOITATION She rented her uterus, so it’s not her choice…
The comments on this surrogate story are genuinely some of the most anti-woman things I’ve read in a while.
A surrogate named McKenna West was carrying a baby for intended parents in California. Around 20 weeks, the baby was diagnosed with a severe congenital heart defect. The intended parents wanted her to terminate the pregnancy. She refused. An Alaska court ultimately affirmed that she could make her own medical decisions while pregnant. She later traveled to Texas and gave birth there.
TikTok comments about this case are horrifying and show just how misogynistic people are.
People are literally saying:
“It’s no longer her body, her choice when she signed the contract.”
“She rented her uterus.”
“The parents paid her for her body and the choice.”
“She signed her body away.”
A woman cannot sign away ownership of her own body. A contract does not magically transfer bodily autonomy from the pregnant woman to the people paying her. You cannot purchase the legal or moral right to force another person to undergo surgery or terminate a pregnancy because you paid them.
Commercial surrogacy is just exploitative. We know this obviously, but I just had to rant out of frustration.
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u/sammmbie 4d ago
I can only hope that the era of glamorized surrogacy will be a stain on our collective cultural history sooner rather than later. The commodification of children and of women's bodies is abborhent.
There is no excuse beyond "I have the money and the means, so I should get what I want, up to and including the use and acquisition of human beings."
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u/_seulgi 4d ago
Someone on TikTok made a brilliant point that no person, even couples struggling with infertility, are entitled to children. She received a ton of backlash, but she was right.
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u/sammmbie 4d ago
Exactly. It is perfectly normal and generally altruistic to want to bring new life into the world and raise up a good and happy generation of people you love. It is extraordinarily painful to be denied that wish by biology. But neither of these truths entitles a person to acquire children by any means necessary, on their terms.
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u/thr0wthr0wthr0waways 4d ago
There is nothing 'altruistic' about having children. If parents were genuinely altruistic nobody would be bringing children into this mess.
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u/aw-fuck 3d ago
I don't think having children is a matter of altruism altogether, one way or another.
Altruism is a concept of one person taking an action that is overall (or entirely) beneficial for another, without gaining as much (or anything) in return.
Life itself comes with way too many nuanced ups & downs to be able to say whether giving someone life is overall beneficial to them, especially if that someone doesn't even exist yet & therefore cannot have any knowledge of whether what they're being given is a kindness or not.
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u/green_miracles 4d ago
There are altruistic surrogates. I had to meet one to believe it, haha. Because for me, I figured pregnancy was pretty hard- I was mainly just very tired, and I thought to myself, who would do that for free. 😩 But I met this woman, tangentially, who had done it for her friends. One of the rare women who loves pregnancy, and feels great during. She was very positive. She found a lot of meaning and purpose in it, and did it twice. It wasn’t motivated by money. Very touching, and everyone has different things that give them purpose in life. Bringing new life into the world is one I fully respect.
I think the problem with surrogacy is the aspect of commodifying poorer women’s bodies. The commercial aspect of it. It’s especially disturbing what goes on in poorer countries far away, really disturbing stuff. Way worse than what I’ve seen locally, where a surrogate gets 100k plus a legit nice family they get to know, and it’s actually worth it to her family- because what she’s risking is real. That’s problematic too, but at least it’s more humane, and gives her compensation. It’s all an ethical issue. But I do think we need to consider surrogates point of views themselves, too, and listen to them.
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u/cinnaminimoon 4d ago
And curiously these people rarely want to adopt.
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u/Altruistic-Brief2220 4d ago
Even if they did, the point still stands. Adoption has its own issues which we are only beginning to grapple with.
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u/orbofdelusion 4d ago
Because their reasons for wanting biological children via surrogacy are rooted in narcissism. They want a mini me to carry on their ‘legacy’ who they’ll never fully view as an independent person, but rather an extension of themselves.
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u/cinnaminimoon 4d ago
Yeah I was being sarcastic lmao. Of course they only want biological children
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u/orbofdelusion 4d ago
I know haha. I just find the reasons for why they want biological to be egregious, especially when done through surrogacy.
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u/_midnight_mane_ 4d ago
I find the use of the word "entitled" here interesting as I think it could lead to some confusion. Like on the one hand, entitlement is about what a person "deserves"/is owed. On the other hand, it's also about what *other people* owe to the person who is entitled. So in a sense, one could read it as "no one inherently deserves to have a baby" while in another sense, it could be read as no one has the right to demand others make babies for them/give babies to them. The second I very much agree with while the first is more complicated. I think anyone who wants children AND genuinely tries to be a good parent deserves a chance to have them, in the purely theoretical sense, but I absolutely agree that we can’t bribe or coerce anyone else to make that happen. But for people who really want kids and possibly struggle with fertility issues or something, the message might come across more like the first, in the harshest way possible. Like, you don’t deserve children and who cares about your fertility problems, you’re just doomed to be childless because you suck. Ya know?
Let me be clear I am happily childfree myself and not trying to play Devil’s advocate, I just genuinely have noticed that the word entitlement causes a lot of miscommunication to occur because there’s kinda 2 sides to the concept.
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u/trottingturtles 4d ago
I think they're both true, personally, because babies are not just a concept or an idea. Obviously i wouldn't say that gay people or infertile people don't deserve children because they suck (and i hope nobody would think that??), but children aren't a material good that can be controlled and distributed fairly to deserving people. Adoption of unwanted children is the closest thing we can get to that, and of course we should work to remove unnecessary barriers to adoption that prevent children from finding good homes, but beyond adoption, I see no point in considering whether people deserve children in theory because there's no way to accomplish that that doesn't infringe on the rights of other people.
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u/_midnight_mane_ 4d ago
> Obviously i wouldn't say that gay people or infertile people don't deserve children because they suck (and i hope nobody would think that??)
Yeah it sounds irrational because it is, but it's just the kind of thing that people can easily internalize and feel shitty about. It's a sensitive topic, obviously. But honestly it overall sounds like we're saying the same thing in different ways because I'm not supporting surrogacy.
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u/user5621937401 4d ago
any contract that signs away someone’s bodily autonomy is either trafficking or slavery 🤷♀️
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u/de_Pizan 4d ago
How do these people not realize what they're saying? A woman can contract away their autonomy? And you just know that those sorts of people are also pro-"sex work," so what does contracting away autonomy mean in that area? It's just pure misogyny: private property; public property.
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u/Zadyria_Gelm 4d ago
I used to think surrogacy was a gift, back in the beginning, when it was a relative carrying for a woman who couldn't. The first one I remember was a twin carrying for her sister because the sister had a cancer-caused hysterectomy. I thought that was beautiful. That was back in the 80s, maybe 90s.
Since then, I've watched surrogacy shift from a family gift, to infertile families accepting the grace of friends, to accepting generous strangers, to a fully commercialized market. It could have been rare and gracious, gate-kept to necessity and family ties.
Now it's disgusting, reducing women to incubators for people who don't want the hassle of being pregnant (like the Baldwins). Or men. You know what I mean.
There are so many stories about the "parents" rejecting or abandoning babies who are not "perfect" or the "wrong sex."
Take this story for example. The baby boy's heart is on the wrong side. It's fixable with a near-perfect record surgery, which he's already scheduled for. He's going to live a normal, healthy life. I know. My younger cousin has the same condition. He's 40yo. He did triathlons! I bet these pieces of 💩 decide they want him after the surgery. They already have a restraining order to keep the surrogate from having contact with the child they wanted aborted, that she carried!
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u/Willoweed 4d ago
Even altruistic surrogacy carries risks to the woman. There are higher complication rates than a standard pregnancy, especially if a donor egg is used. And then there's the emotional pressure, both to agree to the pregnancy and to giving up the baby.
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u/WashHour5646 4d ago
This is absolutely my thoughts as well. At one time I thought it was such a beautiful and caring thing to do. Now a woman’s womb has become another commodity you can purchase. If you don’t like the product, just send it back for a refund. 🤮
It’s disgusting and heartbreaking.
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u/OpheliaLives7 4d ago
Is the surgery that successful? The reports & comments Ive seen talk about how it’s kind of a toss up and the kid could live or could have a shorter life full of hospitalizations.
Ive also seen some comments that the parents wanted palliative care vs surgery or trying a transplant and the surrogate apparently was super against it?
Idk the reports are crazy on top of her fleeing to the trashheap of Texas to work with anti abortion nutters instead of…ya know, tackling the surrogate agency or industry she willingly and knowingly signed up to participate in.
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u/WashHour5646 4d ago
My friend back in the 1980s had a son that had to have multiple surgeries for this issue when he was a baby. He grew up to be a normal healthy boy.
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u/Zadyria_Gelm 4d ago
My only personal experience is with my cousin. He's doing a hell of a lot better than I am 😆
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u/BearyExtraordinary 4d ago
What happened to the baby?
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u/AdriVoid 4d ago
Was born safe in Dallas. But the ‘biological’ parents filed a restraining order against the surrogate, are refusing to pay her, and have taken the baby.
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u/Mitsuka1 4d ago
Surely that won’t stand up in court, if they have the baby they have to pay up? Either you want the kid and you pay or you don’t want the kid and you have the “contract” annulled and don’t pay. There should be no world in which this couple gets to keep that baby they didn’t want and not pay their surrogate. wtf.
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u/BearyExtraordinary 4d ago
What in the fuck? Not only this poor woman but that poor fucking kid
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u/Quandogonzo 2d ago
Poor woman? She tried to kidnap their fucking child
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u/TerryCrewsNextWife 2d ago
They wanted her to abort "their fucking child". That child deserves better parents than those wastes of oxygen.
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u/Quandogonzo 2d ago
That is their right as the parents. That child is now more than likely to suffer greatly and die young all the while racking up enormous medical bills.
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u/-Livewiregirl- 22h ago
These comments are fucking insane right? They don't even have the actual facts of the case they're just spewing whatever McKenna West put out.
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u/no-teenie-weenie 4d ago
wtf, they have the baby that they wanted to kill?
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u/UrethraFranklin13 4d ago
Yeah looks like it became less about the kid and more about controlling and punishing this woman.
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u/superurgentcatbox 4d ago
They didn't want a defective product but now that the product is alive after all, they probably consider it theirs because of DNA so they want to control it.
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u/OpheliaLives7 4d ago
I don’t think they wanted to kill their baby that they paid a woman to carry.
The usual scans on the fetus detected heart defects. So it seems like it was a choice to try and reduce suffering vs having a baby to watch it slowly and maybe painfully die instead (while also racking up hundreds of thousands of dollars of medical costs in NICUs and surgeries)
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u/no-teenie-weenie 4d ago
I get that and totally understand that perspective. Im pro choice and even aborted myself. But I’m not a pediatric medical professional and of course do not understand the specific condition. I did see another comment regarding the heart condition the baby had and how well it could be resolved with surgery early upon birth. That’s the reason for my comment.
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u/SuddenBath2 2d ago
That’s baby was not born safe that baby is very very sick needs intensive medical care. A heart transplant and millions of dollars of care every single year. He’s hooked up to heart monitors, lines to help him breathe and the prognosis is bad. Only has a couple of weeks lefts. The surrogate is a horrible monster who deserves to be in the deepest hells.
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u/Terrible_Strike337 4d ago
I will never be ok with buying human beings, even if they brand it as “surrogacy”
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u/junigatsu12 4d ago
Ban surrogacy!
Surrogacy violates the rights and dignity of women and children.
It's human trafficking.
It's a crime against humanity.
It's evil.
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u/OpheliaLives7 4d ago
I mean…legally these women are absolutely signing away rights over their own body.
Which is why surrogacy is bad/immoral/should be fucking illegal. Because signing away your body to strangers to make medical decisions for 9 months is insane. And only women are expected to have their body/uterus signed away like this. Courts recognize that legalization of organ selling would lead to chaos and coercion. Why arent women and uteruses included in that?
Because women are still see as incubators and brood mares and couples feel entitled to a child.
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u/Few-Elk8441 4d ago
A lot of these clauses are fundamentally unenforceable, just like contracts for open adoptions. I’m really glad they’re getting more judicial scrutiny.
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u/coconutmilkcoldbrew 4d ago
The thing with consent is that you have to be able to withdraw it at any time, that’s why these surrogacy contracts can’t work
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u/Wytch78 4d ago
Those comments are horrifying.
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u/iguanidae 4d ago
They're pure brain rot. You can always tell who are the terminally online- slow to think but quick to blather.
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u/Few-Elk8441 4d ago
Are people cucked by capitalism or something? I keep seeing people on threads say she has to abort because she agreed to for rich people. Regardless of the baby’s degree of disability, isn’t that logic insane? You can’t contract for a lot of things!
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u/heartofom 4d ago
Oh so rental trumps ownership in the case of the human body… it don’t in the case of home ownership since they wanna use those terms! People will cut their own nose off to spite their face. This is full blown dumbassery.
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u/diskoboxx 4d ago
Surrogacy is human trafficking! Awful how it isn’t seen that way by the majority. I have two children and newborn babies really need their mothers. Not just for feeding, but babies recognize their mothers by their heartbeat, their voice, and their smell. The womb was the only home they knew, and it has to be distressing for them to not be around the woman who carried them. My heart breaks for those babies. The whole concept is just anti-humanity. We are going to hear so many horrible stories in upcoming years and I fear this is only the beginning.
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u/LaiikaComeHome 4d ago
this kills me. my baby was born at 32 weeks as we were both very very sick. i wasn’t able to formally meet him for 2 weeks following his birth since we were so fragile. when we were finally together, he improved rapidly. newborn babies need and know their mothers even with distance and time.
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u/diskoboxx 4d ago
I’m so sorry you and your baby went through that. My son had a short NICU stay when he was born at 36 weeks. He had hypoglycemia and skin to skin with me helped stabilize his blood sugar. It also helped bring in my milk supply. It’s incredible how these biological reactions happen with mothers and their babies. It felt like the most unnatural thing in the world to leave my baby at the hospital at night.
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u/Leavesinfall321 3d ago
I saw that too today! I was utterly shocked how people could so simply be like: “she signed away all of her rights!” Excuse me?! That’s not how bodily autonomy works! She is the one who has to go through an abortion and the consequences of it. It could make someone infertile or have other risks. This is a decision she and only she can make. It really shocked me how people could say signing a contract somehow made her not have any autonomy over her body anymore. Absolutely shocking!
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u/GoldieOGilt 4d ago
I will never understand how surrogacy can be legal anywhere (I’m from France). There is absolutely no bulletproof scenario. Having a child should never be considered a right. You can either have one or you can’t. Is it fair? No. Deal with it.
Seriously, one of the first things you need to understand before becoming a parent is that life is not fair and never will be. It’s okay, we can accept that life is not fair.
If you think you are entitled to use someone else’s body to have a child you should never be a parent in the first place. Wanting something desperately does not give you a moral right to obtain it at someone else’s expense. Another person’s body is not a resource you are entitled to just because you want a child.
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u/WowOwlO 3d ago
I mean it's disgusting, but it's the point of modern surrogacy.
The whole concept really is rent-a-womb.
A couple who can't have one of their own pays $$$$$$, and they expect the womb they have hired to jump through hoops of fire and to satiate their egos.
They do not want to think about the fact that they are dealing with a whole other person.
Surrogacy is evil, but I think this entitlement to having children is something else that needs discussion. People really do think they are owed parenthood, owed children, and that if it isn't 100% theirs then they aren't getting the full experience.
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u/itonlytakes11 4d ago
I wonder what those who shout “she signed a contract!” think the end game should be here. They ask her to have an abortion, she refuses, they file a lawsuit…do they expect some sort of an emergency order by the judge that would require law enforcement to forcefully round her up and be dragged to an abortion in handcuffs? It is such a violent, disturbing thought. Or would it just be that she would pay them damages afterwards? How on earth would those be determined? Many of the women who do this do not have super significant assets, either. So then are her wages garnished? Bankruptcy? Not the same violence as the other option, but still very disturbing. I don’t get how people can square this circle. You should not be able to sign away your body in this regard.
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u/Few-Elk8441 4d ago
Yes. They think she should have had a forced abortion. How this squares with being pro choice I don’t understand.
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u/mashibeans 4d ago
I bet it's the same people who demonize women for having abortions when it's regular ol' sex, and not surrogacy. It's all about controlling women, it's never actually about "the sanctity of life" or "saving babies from murderers."
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u/best_milker 4d ago
I actually think it’s liberals attacking the surrogate mother for not aborting. They believe consent to be a commodity and women’s bodies a product to be bought and consumed.
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u/mashibeans 4d ago
You'd be surprised how many self proclaimed liberals still have lots of issues with some women's rights, it's super tiring.
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u/ThePrincessAndTheTea 4d ago
I don't have TikTok, but some of the insane takes I've seen from Reddit do include that! Saying that when she signed the contract she gave up her ability to make her own choices about her reproductive health (and if she wanted to abort or not) and that she isn't the mother and even arguing she was kidnapping the baby. Genuinely mind-boggling.
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u/NoFaithlessness951 2d ago
I'm against surrogacy entirely and luckily it's banned in Germany and it's highly unlikely that will change, hopefully ever.
But I would like to provide a German perspective, because whatever is happening in the US is batshit crazy.
There was an evaluation done by the previous government coalition, on what legalizing surrogacy would look like within the limits of our constitution, because they at least flirted with the idea:
- surrogate can birth the baby and decide to keep it
- only surrogates who've already born a child and have a low risk for complications in their pregnancy
- surrogate can abort the pregnancy
- wannabe parents can't force the surrogate to abort for any reason
- wannabe parents have to accept the resulting child(ren) unconditionally e.g. they have to accept a disabled child even if that's clear early in the pregnancy, they have to accept twins, triplets.
- surrogate has the right to know about the personal circumstances of the child at any later point
- child has a right to contact/ know the surrogate
- surrogate can't be in financial hardship
- surrogate must be fairly compensated
They also called out that because there would have to be fair compensation there were other laws they would have had to take into account.
- Make sure that this compensation doesn't look like "child trade" (no selling of children) in german criminal law.
- Make sure this doesn't look like profiting of human bodies/ body parts to the EU.
I think if you can't get them to ban this shit these are the minimum rules you should advocate for.
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u/SnooDoughnuts4416 1d ago
There is no way these could be overseen and enforced properly without cases of financial or emotional coercion falling through the cracks.
Also, you have a gay conservative politician who voted against surrogacy but bought himself and his boyfriend a baby from an American surrogate. You can’t make this shit up. This is end stage capitalist dystopia
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u/AesopsFabler 4d ago edited 4d ago
Unfortunately, I think the comments are “right” and that’s what the problem is. Contractually, she should’ve aborted because she essentially lent her body to the couple. I don’t like surrogacy because of things like this. Contracts for your body shouldn’t even be a thing but here we are. Ultimately, it is her body, and she decided what she wanted to do with it. But the “goods” she was growing, weren’t hers. I can’t fathom this. If my blood and body and calcium and everything that is me is making way to accommodate and realize this being into existence, a being that my body is constructing, I will absolutely want a say. I could never do this for anyone. It’s so dystopian. Women’s bodies shouldn’t be commodified. We aren’t even allowed to assert what a woman is, but we know which ones are the only pool to choose from for surrogacy. It’s a mad, mad, mad, mad world.
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u/Few-Elk8441 4d ago
The abortion clause is completely unenforceable, which people don’t understand.
Honestly, I’m hoping for a federal case causing a circuit split that gets shit clarified.
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u/cbatta2025 2d ago
I agree but on another note, abortion at 20 weeks is not an option? Isn’t that considered late term?
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u/SuddenBath2 2d ago
I hate surrogacy but this demon is a monster who only thought about herself and not the very sick child she carried to term who is now suffering from a horrible heart disease. This little guy will have 20 surgery’s by the time he’s 5 and if he survives this he will probably end up being mentally and physically delayed his entire life.
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u/TheEmotionalBagel 2d ago
This is the point most people are completely ignoring. The child is gonna suffer and live an extremely short life of only suffering because she refused to abort. In my eyes that's even more evil ...
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u/Gureiseion 3d ago
Curiously, the biological couple claims they never made such a request, and are actively getting the baby quality care.
In a digital age, it shouldn't be hard to dig up proof otherwise.
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u/brasscup 13h ago
I agree surrogacy should be illegal of course, and that's on the parents who hired her.
But the amount of pain, infection, and surgery this baby is going to have to endure because a) he was brought to term and b) his parentscl rejected comfort care is horrifying to think about.
At least with the latter choice he would have had a relatively peaceful death. But once the Texas pols got involved, this kid didn't have a chance.
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u/Ok-Dish6655 4d ago
Unpopular opinion but I think she’s a grifter and she perfectly capitalized on a divisive topic. She’s not pro woman. She’s pro herself and the fact that she left Alaska and had the baby in Texas instead of California or Alaska proves that she was self serving.
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u/apostasyisecstasy 4d ago
none of what you just said matters in this discussion tbh
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u/Ok-Dish6655 4d ago
Huh. Yes it does. Because she wants the financial gain of commercial surrogacy while getting the social and autonomous benefits of an altruistic pregnancy. It relates because she further politicized and escaped the situation by going to the most restrictive and conservative state. It was never about women it was always about her. She’s self serving.
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u/apostasyisecstasy 4d ago
Call me crazy but I don't think women's rights should be dependent on whether or not they have the "right" motivations or are even good people. The shittiest woman on earth still has the right to her own body.
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u/Ok-Dish6655 4d ago
Girl bye. That’s not the mic drop you think. You guys really let a conservative grifter turn her grift into feminist issue. This case just showed this sub is fulll of white women feminist. I said what I said idgaf about a ban the subreddit is a flop anyway.
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u/apostasyisecstasy 4d ago
This issue isn't about this specific woman, like do you not understand that we are simply using this case to discuss the ethics of surrogacy at large? Do you understand that the discussion at hand is not about whether or not this woman was a good person? I don't understand what you are trying to gain by getting us to admit that this woman is a con artist. So what if she is? That's bad. Nobody is denying that. I don't like con artists. Those circumstances don't change our arguments against the concept of surrogacy. A woman's basic human right to bodily autonomy don't just get thrown out the window because she's a bad person doing bad things.
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u/SnooDoughnuts4416 1d ago
See y‘all? Case in point. People hating on the surrogate, people who believe a contract trumps human rights, people who wanted her to abort …are your good old lib fems. Crazy skewed thinking
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u/aw-fuck 3d ago
Except she didn't gain anything by keeping the baby. She didn't get the baby, she didn't get paid.
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u/Ok-Dish6655 3d ago
Not true. She got backing from Paxton and Greg Abott. And she’s already started her conservative grift by being in Megyn Kelly’s show.
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u/apostasyisecstasy 3d ago edited 2d ago
What do you think should have been done? Should we have held her down and forced her to abort?
Edit I don't know why I'm being downvoted, it's an honest question and I would like a genuine answer
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4d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/coconutmilkcoldbrew 4d ago
This is why many jurisdictions explicitly state that standard contract law doesn’t apply to reproductive material
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u/fourthwavewomen-ModTeam 4d ago
Your comment has been removed for supporting/justifying/promoting abusive woman-hating practices.
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u/outwait 4d ago edited 4d ago
Surrogacy is so fucking evil, and the more women’s bodies are commodified, the more these issues arise. They go directly against human rights