GESTIÓN EN SALUD PÚBLICA: BioEdge: Another frontier in the Reproductive Revolution: social surrogacy

domingo, 2 de junio de 2019

BioEdge: Another frontier in the Reproductive Revolution: social surrogacy

BioEdge: Another frontier in the Reproductive Revolution: social surrogacy

Bioedge

Another frontier in the Reproductive Revolution: social surrogacy

by Michael Cook | 2 Jun 2019 |

^{One of Arnold Schwarzenegger's worst films, Junior}

A Los Angeles fertility doctor is facilitating social surrogacy for Hollywood starlets who want children but whose careers will suffer if they become pregnant. In a revealing interview with The Guardian, Dr Vicken Sahakian says that he sees nothing unethical about paying a woman to carry another woman’s baby.

“I don’t have issues with it. If you’re a 28-year-old model or an actor and you get pregnant, you’re going to lose your job – you will. If you want to use a surrogate, I’ll help you.”
“In this field, in Los Angeles, you can’t judge clients. This is the wild west. Twenty years ago helping a gay couple was taboo – it still is in Arkansas. We are so in the infancy of all of this.”

Sahakian says that he organises about 20 social surrogacies a year – up from a handful five years ago, even though it could cost US$150,000:

“If social surrogacy was more affordable, more women would be doing it, absolutely. There’s an advantage to being pregnant, the bonding, I understand that, and from experience I can say that most women love to be pregnant. But a lot of women don’t want to be pregnant and lose a year of their careers.”

A typical client is not a big name in Tinsel Town, but an aspiring actress. Sahakian says:

“They tell me point blank, ‘If I get pregnant, I will lose my part. I work, I don’t have time because of work. I model, I act, I look good like this and I don’t want to disfigure my body.’”

There is still a stigma attached to using the services of a surrogate mother, Sahakian acknowledges. Some of his clients work around this by wearing prosthetic swelling bellies. The market leader is a British company called Moonbump. Its products are made with five different skin tones and for four stages of pregnancy. Apart from using them in films or theatre, “in many cases, [they are] for strengthening emotional bonds as you move forward with a planned surrogacy or adoption” – according to the Moonbump website.

The Guardian’s journalist asked Sahakian to look into the future:

Back at the Pacific Fertility Center, underneath Sahakian’s framed medical certificates, I put this to him: that in 20 years people will think of social surrogacy as no more unnatural than surrogacy for gay couples.
“Twenty? No, a couple of years from now. We’re already almost there. Surrogacy isn’t taboo any more. In the UK, you are so far behind us. Thank God – so many of my clients come from the UK, it’s good for business! But that’s going to change.”

Michael Cook is editor of BioEdge

An interesting group within the American pro-life movement is African-Americans who oppose abortion. The Rev Clenard Childress Jr, for instance, is a New Jersey pastor who runs a website called Black Genocide. Groups like his highlight the fact that African-American women account for a third of abortions in the US.

This might have been remained a factoid about the US abortion wars, but it was unexpectedly placed on centre stage this week with the Supreme Court's decision in Box v. Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky. Justice Clarence Thomas, the only African-American on the bench, was seething with anger when he reflected on the fate of black babies (see our story below):

abortion in the United States is also marked by a considerable racial disparity. The reported nationwide abortion ratio— the number of abortions per 1,000 live births—among black women is nearly 3.5 times the ratio for white women. And there are areas of New York City in which black children are more likely to be aborted than they are to be born alive—and are up to eight times more likely to be aborted than white children in the same area.

Journalists who bothered to report his remarks shook their heads and described him as loopy. He's not. That abortion has a disproportionate impact on the poor and disenfranchised is a blot on American society. For a touching comment on this, check out this rap song from a group called Flipsyde, Happy Birthday.