Comment by DoreenMichele
7 years ago
While the science is amazing, why go this route rather than having a surrogate mother? I've heard the price of a surrogate is $30-50K.
That sounds rhetorical, but I'll bite anyway.
Some women really long for the experience of childbirth. This may not be entirely psychological. Giving birth has significant impact on a woman's physiology. In addition to changing the shape of the hips and often other details like that, it leaves a woman a chimera for many years. Because her blood and the blood of the baby mix, she carries cells from the baby for many years afterwards.
I have a genetic disorder. I have two biological sons. I was not diagnosed until they were about 12 and 14 years old, so I didn't (consciously) know about my condition at the time that I was making reproductive choices (though I did know I was always "sickly").
My first pregnancy significantly impacted how I eat. I removed a number of things from my diet to cope with my difficult pregnancy and many were never added back into my diet. I have reason to believe this did my health a lot of good. For example, it cured the chronic, sever vaginal yeast infections I had for more than two years prior that pregnancy. I never again had chronic, severe yeast infections.
I have read up a bit on pregnancy-induced chimerism and talked a bit with people online about it and talked a fair amount with my sons. I have come to think that some women long for a baby because it can have a profound impact on a woman's body in ways we don't fully understand and perhaps sometimes that longing is rooted in some subconscious awareness that going through the process of carrying a child to term may alter their body in ways that are potentially for the best.
This would be really hard to prove. We have no means to see what the biological outcome would be for the same woman with and without the pregnancy experience. But I am in remarkably good health for someone with my genetic disorder and I credit my two pregnancies with some portion of that fact.
It's not only about the woman and her body. It's also about the child and the relationship between woman and child. Our lives don't start when we leave the womb. Our first experiences are inside of it, when we are immensely close with the mother - hell, we are inside of her body. So... It's also about sharing this first experiences and about bonding with the child. Something that is not possible with a surrogate mother. Or rather, something that happens to the surrogate mother instead. I don't think that 'handing the baby over' can ever be easy for that reason.
Theres a good episode of Law and Order that deals with that issue. The plot is a surrogate mother keeping the child because she became attached to it.
The mental state of the mother while she's pregnant has a significant effect on the baby. For example if the mother has a lot of stress the baby will have symptoms of that stress years later.
Imo: that goes to show that mother and baby share feelings during the childbearing process. If negative feelings are pushed down to the baby. Then it would make sense that positive feelings are too.
That is quite interesting to hear from a woman.
Artificial wombs are coming. I was under the impression that women considered pregnancy as a burden which carries risks, is painful, causes all sorts of negative hormonal / physiological effects, etc.
I think that artificial wombs will initially be challenged by feminist and conservative groups, but will end up being accepted, first with wealthy Western women, but eventually by everyone else.
I have never considered that women might choose to carry a child, if they weren't required due to technological and scientific advances.
> I was under the impression that women considered pregnancy as a burden which carries risks, is painful, causes all sorts of negative hormonal / physiological effects, etc.
It does that, and is also something many women desire. Some thigns are both really hard and painful, and also very rewarding.
I really doubt you are going to get any challenges from feminists, or at least not very many. Feminism is all about empowering women to be able to do what they want, which includes having a baby using an artificial womb. Conservative groups might be against it, but it will depend on which group. Not all conservative groups are against IVF, which is similar in the sense that it allows a woman who would otherwise not be able to have a child have a child.
> Feminism is all about empowering women to be able to do what they want, which includes having a baby using an artificial womb.
The types of feminists that you'll see negative responses from, are those that use feminism as a platform for controlling others. For example, the kinds of feminists (some people would call them fake feminists) that get upset when a woman chooses to shave her armpits, or likes to wear lipstick or heels, etc. etc. Those types always look for opportunities - no matter how absurd - to proclaim something is the latest attempt to enslave women to their biology, and so on and so forth.
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Some women hate it. Some feel a sense of wonder (my mother was like that, when carrying my younger brother). Some face it with resignation (that was more like my wife). My wife's biggest issues involved her blood pressure and fear about actually giving birth. One friend I have no doubt would still have carried her child naturally, even given another option. Another friend, I'm not sure about.
Carrying a child is often a very emotional experience, and it makes sense that reactions to those emotions would vary pretty wildly between different people.
Are you talking about artificial wombs that are independent of humans?
I can see feminists, evangelicals, and quite a alot of people opposing humans grown in labs.
You might be surprised to learn that there is a whole segment of the population who view bringing new lives into the world as a sacred undertaking. Some women of this persuasion consider growing a new person inside of themselves to be the highest calling. Also, pregnancy and childbirth can be incredibly fulfilling experiences, for both parents. After all, modern life doesn’t have many rights of passage on the same level.
Why exactly do you believe feminism would be against artificial wombs? (which, btw, is not even what we are talking about - these are transplanted natural wombs not artificial).
Feminism is about empowering women to make their own reproductive choices. Giving them MORE choices is a positive not a negative for feminism.
I'm a woman, and I absolutely agree with the OP. There is nothing in the world like the mother-child bond!
Sure it's risky and is painful and it makes me scared sometimes, but the thought of some artificial womb producing my baby gives me the shudders.
Would it even be "my" baby, if I didn't carry it? Similarly, I don't think I could have the same kind of love for an adopted child as for my biological. I'm sure you can love it just as much, but differently.
This reminds me of a peculiar condition my mother was suffering from. She had to consume this particular tablet everyday to keep her cough and cold at bay. When she began carrying my sister, she was told by the Gynac that she had to stop consuming the tablet as it would harm the baby. She stopped the tablet and after 3-4 days of trouble, her cough and cold problem simply disappeared. Ever since, she never had to consume the tablet again.
> Because her blood and the blood of the baby mix, she carries cells from the baby for many years afterwards.
This is not true. If the baby had AB blood and the mother had A, then the baby's blood cells would be attacked by the mother's.
It does happen. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemolytic_disease_of_the_newbo...
I don't know about cells of the baby remaining in the body of the mother, but in the link you posted it says that HDN is caused (a) in the baby (b) by IgG antibodies (not cells).
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Do you feel it’s fair to say that women generally long for childbirth because that’s what selection pressures in the environment left us with?
I mostly think nature designed sex to feel good as a way of tricking people into getting pregnant. Most pregnancies are not planned. Two people were just trying to have a good time. You have to actively work at not getting pregnant if you want a sex life, but don't want children.
The question of longing for a baby is mostly a first world problem. In most parts of the world, they still have more traditional issues, like shot gun weddings for out-of-wedlock pregnancies.
It is sort of like saying "we crave oxygen." You only are aware of that in its absence. Otherwise, you breathe because that's what you do, not because you sit around writing odes to the wonderfulness of oxygen, oh, how I long for thee.
This is part of why people are weirded out. The default state is that women are trying like hell to not get pregnant most of the time. Then you have some weird edge case where they can't just get pregnant, you discover this matters enough to them to be willing to go to rather drastic lengths to achieve it and it flies in the face of our expectations.
Even if this question was interesting (it is not) there is no reason to think the experience of motherhood would give someone particular insight into the answer.
Wow, that sounds intense/neat. Thanks for sharing.
So you are saying that other people should bear the cost for your incredibly complex and expensive procedure because "desire".
The tax on high income earners is so high. I'm tired of paying so much for things like Uterous implants.
This is why I'm leaving this godforsaken country and will be contributing to a more free country where a man is actually valued.
#MeToo