After years of trying to get pregnant, exploring the range of fertility treatments, all unsuccessful, our journey led us to gestational surrogacy: we make a “baby cake” and bake it in another woman’s “oven.”
~ 30 Rock actress Elizabeth Banks via US Magazine, March 30
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Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.
How sweet. Not to worry though the genuis’s who think up some of these solutions are the ones who pro-women. Hopefully they will get to experience a fraction of the pain women are having to endure in the name of science. It would probably go like this yes mr. or mrs. or ms. so and so I know you like your degrees I can appreciate that but we’re made some degree cakes and are here to bake them in your degree oven. You think your degree oven belongs to you you put value on what is yours. Not to worry here’s some kleenex.
I guess when you live your life the in the liberated, no holds barred way Elizabeth Banks has, it’s really NOT surprising she can’t have children.
Of course, that nasty tattoo might have something to do with it too……
Angel, help me understand how Elizabeth Banks’s lifestyle has created her fertility issues. What evidence do you have that she has lived a “liberated, no holds barred” life, and that it in any way affected her ability to have children? Do you even know anything about her life, other than the fact that she is an actress?
I think your statement is callous toward women who have infertility issues. You’re implying that somehow women are responsible for their own infertility. I’m sure that makes women who are trying and trying to have kids feel AWESOME. /sarcasm
Then again, you also blame her “nasty tattoo” for her infertility. What are you doing there? Are you saying tattoos cause infertility? That God somehow punishes people for having “nasty” tattoos? What about the fact that the tattoo is not actually real?
Ok, she’s trying to be cute, but what a telling comment. A woman’s body: just a handy-dandy home appliance to be rented out for others’ convenience!
Infertility is heartbreaking, but this isn’t the answer.
This is a much better solution. I can’t have my own so I’ll pay a woman to go through a pregnancy, labor and delivery and surrender the baby to me. After all, those bonding hormones like oxytocin and motherly instincts will know the baby isn’t hers and just switch off. Let’s not forget how dignified it is to be created in a petry dish.
I agree with Lia and Dawn-Marie. While I realize that infertility issues can be devastating, something about “renting” a womb like this is really creepy and smells of exploitation.
Gestational surrogacy, because children wanting to be adopted just don’t meet your genetic standards.
I don’t think she’s doing anything wrong, per se. But her phrasing is really weird and dehumanizing, for both the surrogate and the child, and…kind of creepy in a vague and hard-to-quantify sort of sense.
I’m all for babies, but.. don’t the pro-choice commenters always complain about using a woman’s uterus as a ‘baby making machine’ or treating women like ‘brood mares?’ Why don’t they see this in the same light? Is it because money is exchanged? What about the women in less affluent areas, like the young women of India who are used as surrogates for affluent Westerners?
Like I said, I’m all for babies, but people are spending a lot of money and going to great lengths to get them, while perfectly healthy parents destroy healthy babies in the name of “choice.” When the pro-choicers ask us, “Who’s going to adopt all the unwanted babies?!” I wish they could see the thousands and thousands of families waiting for a baby.
Elsa – you took the words out of my mouth. Infertility doesn’t seem to discriminate too much. The real issue is how you deal with it. The modern fertility industry, with a few exceptions, is the absolute flip side of abortion. It turns young human beings into objects of their parents’ desire, to be manipulated, selectively reduced(aborted), frozen, discarded all at their parents’ choosing. And just like abortion, you can understand the parents’ temptation. They walk into these offices and there are books filled with pictures of the beautiful babies these doctors can give you. All that stands between you and what you want are “procedures”. Flip side of abortion. Same equation, just a different desire at the end. The embryo/fetus are missing in both.
After all, those bonding hormones like oxytocin and motherly instincts will know the baby isn’t hers and just switch off.
I remember when Samantha was born I thought she was the most beautiful thing I ever saw, even though I was sore and tired and grumpy. I didn’t want to be away from her for one minute.
in promoting adoption we have to remember that adoptive moms go through these emotions and hormonal changes too. Sometimes it irritates me when prolifers say “just” place the baby for adoption because it’s not that easy.
The modern fertility industry, with a few exceptions, is the absolute flip side of abortion
I also heard that they have a relatively low success rate as well.
Philly, you’re right, adoption is very hard. But, one of my relatives who was reunited with her adopted-out child as an adult now proudly counts her child’s children among her grandchildren. The reunion wasn’t easy on either of them, lots of emotions both positive and negative, but my relative doesn’t have the regrets and nightmares of the post-abortive. I had a dream last summer that my baby survived and came to see me as an adult. Then my alarm went off. Worst waking-up to reality ever.
There’s ways of dealing with infertility that doesn’t treat women like machines. Plus, the pro-choicers/pro-aborts often whine at us about “Who’s going to adopt all the children” then we get stories like this!
I get it, some people don’t feel like they can adopt. But they can spend money on a surrogate, who essentially is just being used for her uterus. Why aren’t the pro-choicers/pro-aborts who comment on this blog expressing their outrage about this?
I had a dream last summer that my baby survived and came to see me as an adult. Then my alarm went off. Worst waking-up to reality ever.
Ninek sorry you went through that. *HUGS*
I know a few surrogates. They are proud of what they do. They have awesome body powers, and they are giving a lifetime gift to someone else. You opt- in for it, not opt- out. If I weren’t a C-sectioner, first class, I’d do it.
She probably had all sorts of heartbreak, and is trying to find the kindest way to talk about it. Rather than shame and heartbreak and failure on display, she goes for the funny and flip way to talk about it. She’s a professional comedic actress. It’s what she does.
If only infertile couples would adopt, there would be no room for pro-abortion folks to complain about pro-lifers not caring after a child is born. I’m saddened women are unable to conceive, but I don’t understand the necessity of paying $10,000 a chance to implant a child in her/another woman’s womb. Why not put the money towards adopting a child?
I could care less what proaborts complain about. That seems to be all that they do. Well, complain and lie.
The truth is we care for a woman and her baby before, during and after the birth!! What in the world are all of the diapers, cribs, strollers and carseats for? The formula, blankets, onesies etc.?
What if whole churches committed themselves to adoption? :)
ninek,
I am sorry about that. I have had a similar dream. I reach for her and she is gone and I wake up.
Aubrey’s just awesome.
Call me old-fashioned, but I think “blessed with a baby” is better than “make a baby.”
ninek, I don’t envy the memories you and others here have. The only “Reality” I wake up to is on this site and doesn’t in any way compare. :(
Kelly352, you inadvertently feed into the myth, though that there are all these children waiting to be adopted. As we all know, hundreds of thousands of couples languish on waiting lists for years waiting to adopt a young child. Even young children (under 5) who are available for adoption are adopted almost immediately out of the foster care system. A quick search of the national database of children waiting to be adopted in the foster care system reveals only 42 cases of children under 5 and almost universally those children have severe disabilities that will require a family with special experience to manage that (often the social workers will not consider families without experience for those children, and probably rightly so). The main demographic of children waiting for adoption are older children and sibling groups (to say nothing of the majority of children in foster care who are not available for adoption), and I can understand why not everyone feels comfortable starting out with a teenager or even a 10 year old as a first time parent. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t do all we can for those children who are “harder to adopt” but you can’t point to infertile people who go to these extremes to have children (which I absolutely disagree with from a moral standpoint) and say “just adopt”. It’s just not that easy.
Ninek: I’m all for babies, but.. don’t the pro-choice commenters always complain about using a woman’s uterus as a ‘baby making machine’ or treating women like ‘brood mares?’
If it’s against their will, then yeah.
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Why don’t they see this in the same light?
Because this is not against their will.
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Is it because money is exchanged? What about the women in less affluent areas, like the young women of India who are used as surrogates for affluent Westerners?
I remember a thread a while back – perhaps even a couple years or more – here on Jill’s site, and it was said that at times the woman can make more than what her family would make in two years or more. That can be a powerful force in making it an attractive deal. If both sides of the agreement – the people that want to have a kid, and the woman that wants to be a surrogate – are for it, what real harm does that do?
Doug,
I think that while there are probably some women who enter into surrogacy arrangements truly of their own volition and are psychologically equipped for what goes along with it, those who are induced into it by the huge financial payoffs don’t necessarily want to be surrogates any more than women want to be prostitutes. Especially when you get into the power dynamics of money and extreme poverty, you’re running a real risk that this woman is not prepared for the psychological effects of this arrangement. In those situations, she is being used as an incubator in a very literal sense.
But even in situations in which the woman is prepared for it and enters into it of her own free will, the arrangement is still degrading to women and motherhood, (and the dignity of the newly created life too) b/c it reduces the mother’s act of carrying the child to a mechanical role (i.e. incubator). It doesn’t matter who incubates the child, as long as “it” gets incubated and handed off the the parents who paid for “it” (b/c not all surrogacy situations involve the purchasing of an “oven” for the couple’s own genetic material (or “baby cake” as Ms. Banks puts it)).
@Angel
That is a pretty unfair statement to make! You don’t know this actress personally. Secondly, as a tattooed momma I find your statement of the “nasty tattoo” to be very offensive and cruel. I have 5 tattoos, 4 of which give glory to my maker in heaven! People ask me about them all the time, in which I have an open door to share the love of Christ.
Whether her tattoo is real or fake, the meaning behind skull tatts is that one is not afraid of death. It is a statement that some people like to make. And traditionally that is what skulls mean. Check it out sometime. You may think some one’s tattoo looks nasty but what if said tattoos share the love of Christ? Are they still nasty?
CT: Especially when you get into the power dynamics of money and extreme poverty, you’re running a real risk that this woman is not prepared for the psychological effects of this arrangement. In those situations, she is being used as an incubator in a very literal sense.
I agree, CT, surely there are cases where it’s just as you say. Negatives as well as positives.
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But even in situations in which the woman is prepared for it and enters into it of her own free will, the arrangement is still degrading to women and motherhood, (and the dignity of the newly created life too) b/c it reduces the mother’s act of carrying the child to a mechanical role (i.e. incubator).
Well yes, but is that so bad, necessarily, that we forbid the arrangement? If anything I’d say that in such cases, the parents – those who end up with the baby – will be very motivated parents indeed. It would be interesting to see a study of just how well such kids do, and what they feel about it when they are old enough to understand.
As to it being “degrading to women and motherhood,” I don’t agree – I see it as being up to the surrogate woman and the parents who want the baby.
I guess I don’t have a problem with it. Being a woman who is struggling with infertility, I understand her wanting her own biological baby. She’s talking about giving a child life and not glorifying abortion. I’m pro-life. So it’s unconventional and yes there are some negatives, but we aRe judging someone who gave life instead of taking it. I am sad that we as pro-lifers can be just as harsh and judgemental as the other side. How are we different?yes, she is promoting PP, but just as I as a Christian can’t expect a non-believer to act like a Christ follower, I can’t expect a pro-choicer to act like a pro-lifer. And it won’t convert her if we are bashing her for all the world to see. Showing love goes a lot farther than throwing stones.
I didn’t realize we could time-travel. :)