For all the very angry and slow of learning people in the comments telling me im wrong, because im not going to respond to any more of you after some of you think its appropriate to tell me to kms:
1. I’m referring to the specific scene in Handmaids Tale that is photographed in my tweet.
2. Being against the commodification of women’s bodies, regardless of how much you think it’s acceptable pay to use her body as an incubator or broodmare, is NOT a right wing or religious concept. It is a long standing left wing feminist, liberationist stance going back decades. It is also an anti-capitalist stance, given that it is ALWAYS wealthy people asking poorer women, and is a billion dollar industry.
3. I have spent the past 4 years attending pro surrogacy conferences, researching the (peer reviewed) risks involved for the surrogate mothers (physically, financially, emotionally, psychologically), the legalities of the process, the agencies, the profiteers, studies on the impact it has on the children to be contractually removed from their birth mother seconds after delivery, listened to surrogate mothers (both altruistic and commercial), researched the reasons women offer to be surrogate mothers, researched how much informed consent they are actually given about their rights under the contract, researched how much consent and choice they actually have once pregnant (very little), researched the various reasons jurisdictions have banned surrogacy and what was happening to the women there, listened to commissioners and their reasons, and listened to those born of surrogacy.
4. Because of my deep understanding of the surrogacy industry and work with other organisations, surrogate mothers and children born from surrogacy, I have been invited to speak to parliaments, to make submissions to reviews and reports, invited to draft potential amendments to Bills, and most recently to speak at the United Nations about this inherently exploitative and damaging industry that views women in all corners of the globe as services to be bought and paid for, and their wombs a resource to meet the demands of buyers.
5. Consent does not exist if it’s under duress, financial coercion, necessity due to debts or risk of homelessness, our desperate. This goes for prostitution too. When a woman is hungry you put food in her mouth, not a baby in her uterus or a dick in her mouth.
Nothing YOU say or call me will change my mind on the fact that viewing women’s bodies as commodities and objects to be used to be used to incubate a human being you are paying for, and contracting to be bought and sold.