What Adoption Can Teach Us About Altruistic Surrogacy: Canvassing Neonatal Experience When considering the normative status of surrogacy it is imperative that we consider the needs, desires and moral rights of the human being created. The consideration of legal rights is also imperative but is not addressed here. As surrogacy involves a person’s removal from the gestational mother whilst a neonate, it is essential to consider this removal from the neonate’s perspective. This is because a baby has no voice – only a cry – which makes it far too easy to override her or his needs and desires or conflate them with the empowered interests of adults who may be blinded by their own emotions, desires and ideologies. The initial period after birth is the time in a person’s life outside the womb when she or he is most vulnerable and so is most needful of our adult empathy, compassion and care. Yet “most of the literature on the normative status of surrogacy discusses whether surrogacy is intrinsically exploitative or otherwise harmful to the surrogate and whether existing surrogacy practices, in the real world, are in fact exploitative of, or otherwise harmful to, surrogates” Anca Gheaus, “The normative importance of pregnancy challenges surrogacy contracts,” ed. AnA Society for Feminist Analyses, Analize; Journal of Gender and Feminist Studies 6, no. 20 (2016): 20, http://www.analize-journal.ro/library/files/6_2_anca_gheaus__20-31.pdf. rather than the people they create. There may be room for dispute as to what is or isn’t ethical when considering the needs, desires and rights of adult parties Although arguments against all forms of surrogacy from the perspective of the “surrogate” are compelling, see Kajsa Ekman, Being and Being Bought; Prostitution, surrogacy and the split self,” transl. Suzanne Martin Cheadle, (North Melbourne: Spinifex Press, 2013) and “All surrogacy is exploitation – the world should follow Sweden’s ban,” The Guardian, February 26, 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/feb/25/surrogacy-sweden-ban. but when it comes to a consideration of the needs, desires and rights of the voiceless party – the neonate – there’s little room for debate. This is because the belief that quick early removal of babies from their gestational mothers makes a “clean break” The Senate Community Affairs References Committee, Commonwealth Contribution to Former Forced Adoption Policies and Practices, (Commonwealth of Australia, 2012), 22-26, 2.16 - 2.28, http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Community_Affairs/Completed_inquiries/2010-13/commcontribformerforcedadoption/report/c02. of the gestational mother/infant bond, without damage to mother or child, cannot be sustained. Research Proving Maternal Separation is Distressing for Neonates Babies react in a unique way to the gestational mother while in utero as well as post-partum and the importance of gestational mother-infant interactions in mammals is proved by “[o]ver half a century of converging clinical and animal research.” Millie Rincón-Cortés and Regina Sullivan, “Early Life Trauma and Attachment: Immediate and Enduring Effects on Neurobehavioral and Stress Axis Development,” Frontiers in Endocrinology 5 (2014): 33, https://doi.org/10.3389/fendo.2014.00033. During the last phase of gestation a baby can recognize her or his mother’s voice and heartbeat Anthony DeCasper and William Fifer, “Of Human Bonding: Newborns Prefer Their Mothers’ Voices,” Science 208 (1980): 1174-76; Maude Beauchemin et al., “Mother and Stranger: An Electrophysiological Study of Voice Processing in Newborns,” Cerebral Cortex 21 (2011): 1705-11. and the smell of her placenta H. Varendi, R. Porter, and J. Winberg, “Attractiveness of amniotic fluid odor: evidence of prenatal olfactory learning?” Acta Paediatrica 85, no. 10 (1996): 1223-27, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8922088. and both fetuses and newborns react preferentially to their mother's voice over that of other females. Barbara Kisilevsky et al., “Effects of experience on fetal voice recognition,” Psychological Science 14, no. 3 (2003): 220-24, https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9280.02435; DeCasper and Fifer, “Of Human Bonding,” 1174-76; Beauchemin et al., “Mother and Stranger,” 1705-11; D. Querleu et al. “Reaction of the newborn infant less than 2 hours after birth to the maternal voice,” Journal de Gynécologie Obstétrique et Biologie de la Reproduction 13, no. 2 (1984): 125-34; E. Ockleford et al., “Responses of neonates to parents’ and others’ voices,” Early Human Development 18, no. 1 (1988): 27-36. Postpartum, babies respond to maternal odours beginning shortly after birth Varendi, Porter, and Winberg, “Attractiveness of amniotic fluid odor,” 1223-27. and search for eye contact with the gestational mother. Noboru Kobayashi, “Eye-to-eye Confirmation of the Mother-infant Love Bond - Part 1,” Child Research Net, last modified January 1, 2002, http://www.childresearch.net/aboutCS/mediscience/19.html. A whole range of other interactions indicate skin-on-skin contact with her secures neonatal wellbeing. Sandra Pipp and Robert Harmon, “Attachment As Regulation: A Commentary,” Child Development 58, no. 3 (1987): 648-52, http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0009-3920%28198706%2958%3A3%3C648%3AAARAC%3E2.0.CO%3B2-H; J.ay Rosenblatt, “Behavioral development during the mother-young interaction in placental mammals,” in Handbook of Developmental Science, Behavior and Genetics, ed. Kathryn Hood et al. (Hoboken: Wiley Blackwell, 2010), 212-13, https://doi.org/10.1002/9781444327632.ch8; J. Winberg, "Mother and newborn baby: mutual regulation of physiology and behavior-a selective review," Developmental Psychobiology 47 (2005): 217–22; Stephen Brake, Harry Shair, and Myron Hofer, “Exploiting the Nursing Niche: Infant's sucking and feeding behavior in the context of the mother-infant interaction,” in Developmental Psychobiology and Behavioral Ecology Vol 9, ed. E. Blass, (New York: Plenum Publishing Corp, 1988), 347-88. Skin-to-skin contact for 25 to 120 minutes after birth, early suckling, or both, positively influences mother-infant interaction one year later when compared with routines involving separation of mother and infant. K. Bystrov et al., “Early contact versus separation: effects on mother-infant interaction one year later,” Birth 36, no.2 (2009): 97-109, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1523-536X.2009.00307.x. Breastfeeding gives babies the best possible start in life “Breastfeeding in the First Hours After Birth – Breastfeeding Series,” Global Health Media Project, last modified July 31, 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMcgJR8ESRc&feature=youtu.be. and the World Health Organization provides a comprehensive list of studies proving its benefits, Bernardo Horta and Cesar Victora, “Long-term effects of breastfeeding: a systematic review,” World Health Organization, last modified 2013, http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/10665/79198/1/9789241505307_eng.pdf?ua=1. recommending colostrum “as the perfect food for the newborn” with feeding to be “initiated within the first hour after birth,” exclusive breastfeeding “up to six months of age, and continued breastfeeding along with appropriate complementary foods up to two years of age or beyond”. World Health Organization, “Breastfeeding,” last modified 2017, http://www.who.int/topics/breastfeeding/en/. Both primate and human studies show that maternal separation isn’t only stressful to babies Xiaoli Fenga et al., “Maternal separation produces lasting changes in cortisol and behavior in rhesus monkeys,” in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, ed. Charles Gross, 108, no. 34 (2011): 14312-17, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1010943108; A. Dettling, J. Feldon, and C. Pryce, “Repeated parental deprivation in the infant common marmoset (Callithrix jacchus, primates) and analysis of its effects on early development,” Biological Psychiatry 52 (2002): 1037–46, https://doi.org/10.1016/S0006-3223(02)01460-9; Seymour Levine, “Developmental determinants of sensitivity and resistance to stress,” Psychoneuroendocrinology 30, no. 10 (2005): 939–46, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psyneuen.2005.03.013; Luisa Diehl et al., “Long-lasting effects of maternal separation on an animal model of post-traumatic stress disorder: effects on memory and hippocampal oxidative stress,” Neurochemical Research 37, no. 4 (2012): 700-707, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11064-011-0660-6. but “may be a stressor the human neonate is not well evolved to cope with.” Barak Morgan, Alan Horn, and Nils Bergman, “Should Neonates Sleep Alone?” Biological Psychiatry 70, no. 9 (2011): 817-25, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsych.2011.06.018. Human studies have shown that even short-term maternal-neonate separation is stressful to babies, associating it “with a dramatic increase in heart rate variability” as well as “a profoundly negative impact on quiet sleep duration” with an 86% decrease compared to when skin-to-skin with mother. Morgan, Horn, and Bergman, 817. Preterm babies kept separate from their gestational mothers in humidity cribs have been shown to have bonding difficulties regardless of subsequent parental sensitivity. Dieta Wolke, Suna Eryigit-Madzwamuse, and Tina Gutbrod, “Very preterm/very low birthweight infants’ attachment: infant and maternal characteristics,” Archives of Disease in Childhood - Fetal and Neonatal Edition 99 (2014): F70-75, https://doi.org/10.1136/archdischild-2013-303788. The research highlights a contradiction: “In animal research, separation from mother is a common way of creating stress in order to study its damaging effects on the developing newborn brain. At the same time, separation of human newborns is common practice, particularly when specialized medical care is required (e.g. incubator care).” Elsevier, “Maternal separation stresses the baby, research finds,” ScienceDaily, last modified 2 November, 2011, www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/11/111102124955.htm. Dr. Barak Morgan, the author of a 2011 study, claims his research is a step “towards understanding exactly why babies do better when nursed in skin-to-skin contact with mother” Elsevier. and Dr. John Krystal, editor of Biological Psychiatry, claims that Dr. Morgan’s paper “highlights the profound impact of maternal separation on the infant. We knew that this was stressful, but the current study suggests that this is major physiologic stressor for the infant”. Elsevier. Early childhood stress has been shown to have long-term neurodevelopmental effects. Jack Shonkoff et al., “The lifelong effects of early childhood adversity and toxic stress,” Pediatrics 129, no.1 (2012): e232-46, http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/early/2011/12/21/peds.2011-2663. The National Child Traumatic Stress Network, established by the US Congress, warns that many people wrongly assume that young age protects children from the impact of traumatic experiences. Zero to Six Collaborative Group, National Child Traumatic Stress Network, Early Childhood Trauma, (Los Angeles, CA & Durham: National Center for Child Traumatic Stress, 2010), 2, http://nctsn.org/nccts/nav.do?pid=typ_early1. They claim a “growing body of research has established that… infants - may be affected by events that threaten their safety or the safety of their parents/caregivers, and their symptoms have been well documented” and they note that traumatic stress may be a response to “the sudden loss of a parent/caregiver.” Zero to Six, 2. The National Scientific Council on the Developing Child at Harvard University agrees that “[s]cience does not support the claim that infants and young children are too young to be affected by significant stresses,” National Scientific Council on the Developing Child, Excessive Stress Disrupts the Architecture of the Developing Brain: Working Paper 3, (Harvard University: Centre on the Developing Child, 2014), 5, http://developingchild.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2005/05/Stress_Disrupts_Architecture_Developing_Brain-1.pdf. noting that “[h]uman studies with infants and children as well as animal studies have shown that adverse early infant experiences… can lead to short-term neurobehavioral and neurohormonal changes in offspring that may have long-term adverse effects on memory, learning, and behaviour throughout life.” National Scientific Council, 5; Megan Gunnar, “Integrating Neuroscience and Psychological Approaches in the Study of Early Experiences,” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 1008 (2003): 238–47, https://doi.org/10.1196/annals.1301.024. In this way, early separation trauma is biologically embedded, influencing learning, behavior and health for decades to come American Academy of Paediatrics, Helping Foster and Adoptive Families Cope With Trauma, American Academy of Pediatrics and Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption, 2015, 1, https://www.aap.org/en-us/advocacy-and-policy/aap-health-initiatives/healthy-foster-care-america/Documents/Guide.pdf. and perhaps beyond, as research in epigenetics has shown that stress in infancy can have intergenerational impacts on gene transcription. Tamara Franklin et al., “Epigenetic Transmission of the Impact of Early Stress Across Generations,” Biological Psychiatry 68, no.5 (2010): 408-15, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsych.2010.05.036. To suggest that in these many and various scientific studies performed over decades, that the provision of a caregiver as a substitute for the gestational mother, related by DNA to the neonate or not, would completely prevent the impacts of separation on the neonate, is both unsubstantiated and unreasonable. To this date there are no studies that prove that separation from the gestational mother doesn’t affect the neonate adversely. And yet this must be the premise upon which any ethical acceptance of child removal for the purposes of surrogacy is based. A substitute mother, a donor, or a father, may perform damage control, the relationship formed perhaps minimizing some of the impacts of mother-loss, but it cannot prevent them as the impacts occur because of the loss of the gestational mother. Adoption: The Neonate Removal Experiment of the 1950s, 60s and 70s Permanently removing neonates from their gestational mothers to research and observe impacts is out of the question. Despite this, neonate removal is intrinsic to all forms of surrogacy – including so-called “altruistic” surrogacy. The term is inappropriate as surrogacy is not altruistic to neonates and its common use evidences a widespread denial, disregard or ignorance of neonatal experience. Further, this “experiment” of removing children from their gestational mothers at or near to birth, which would never be approved by an ethics committee, has already been conducted en masse on adopted people. Powers to remove children were introduced in the late 1800s with “Aboriginal Protection” Acts and expanded in the 1920s with the nation-wide introduction of adoption legislation, before which legal adoption was unknown at common law Alex Castles, “Discretionary Powers in Adoption Statutes,” Res Judicatae 7, no. 3 (1957): 307, http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/ResJud/1957/59.pdf. and the rights of natural parents inalienable. Castles, 307. The common law didn’t allow parents to voluntarily relinquish guardianship and custody rights during their lifetimes. Stephen Cretney, Principles of Family Law, 5th ed. (London: Sweet & Maxwell, 1990), 657. What followed was the gradual, and later rapid, increase in neonate removal from mostly young unwed mothers, culminating in the boom period of the baby scoop era of the 1950s, 60s and early 70s. Audrey Marshall and Margaret McDonald, The Many-Sided Triangle; Adoption in Australia, (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2001), 3, 6, 38. It is estimated that more than 250,000 Australians in total have been adopted The Senate, Commonwealth Contribution, 8, 1.35, http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Community_Affairs/Completed_inquiries/2010-13/commcontribformerforcedadoption/report/c01. and nearly 10,000 in the peak year of 1972 alone, compared with less than 100 domestic adoptions per year today. Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, Adoptions Australia 2015–16, Child Welfare Series 65, (Canberra: AIHW, 2016), iv, http://www.aihw.gov.au/WorkArea/DownloadAsset.aspx?id=60129558075. This means that the majority of adopted people in Australia have entered their forties and their adoptive parents may have passed away, removing a significant impediment to their public testimony. The opening of records in the 1990s, permitting access to original birth certificates and other information about origins and identity, further enabled the public testimony of adoptees. This personal empowerment, following childhoods of secrecy, invisibility, and psychological isolation, Marshall and McDonald, The Many-Sided Triangle, 3. culminated in the global explosion of the adoptee rights movement as the invention of the World Wide Web revolutionized social connection enabling adoptees to communicate with one another, en masse, for the very first time. The revelation brought about by this personal, legislative and historical conjunction was rapid: adoptees around the world, no matter how “picture perfect” their adoptions, and no matter how loving their adoptive parents, shared similar overwhelming feelings of disconnectedness, loneliness, loss and rage. Facebook alone has more than 40 adoptee groups that testify to the impacts of maternal-neonate separation trauma. A voluminous and undocumented amount of pages, blogs, websites and books by adoptees add to this testimony. Research on adoptees aligns with their testimony by finding that adoptees - people who have typically been removed from their gestational mothers at or very near to birth - have higher than average rates of mental illness and disorders, Margaret Keyes et al., “The mental health of US adolescents adopted in infancy,” Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine 162 (2008): 419-25, https://doi.org/10.1001/archpedi.162.5.419. addictions, Gihyun Yoon et al, “Substance Use Disorders and Adoption: Findings from a National Sample,” in PLoS ONE, ed. Antonio García 7, no. 11 (2012): e49655, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0049655; Paul Sunderland, Adoption & Addiction: Remembered not Recalled, Lifeworks, 2012, video, accessed 28 August, 2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3pX4C-mtiI. disease Lisolette Petersen et al., “Excess Mortality Rate During Adulthood Among Danish Adoptees,” PloS ONE 5, no. 12 (2010), e14365, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0014365. and suicide. Margaret Keyes et al., “Risk of Suicide Attempt in Adopted and Nonadopted Offspring,” Pediatrics 132, no. 4 (2013): 639–46; Gail Slap, Elizabeth Goodman and Bin Huang, “Adoption as a Risk Factor for Attempted Suicide During Adolescence” Pediatrics 108, no. 2 (2001): e30, http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/108/2/e30.full; A. Von Borczyskowski et al., “Suicidal behaviour in national and international adult adoptees: a Swedish cohort study” Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology 41, no. 2 (2006): 95-102; Wendy Jacobs (mother of loss), “Adoption and Suicide” in “Known Consequences of Separating Mother and Child at Birth Implications for Further Study,” Musings of the Lame, accessed 28 August, 2017, http://www.adoptionbirthmothers.com/known-consequences-of-separating-mother-and-child-at-birth-implications-for-further-study/; Thomas Graham (adoptee), “Where darkness resides: suicide and being adopted – is there a connection of elevated risk?” Australian Journal of Adoption 8, no. 2 (2014), http://pandora.nla.gov.au/pan/98265/20150416-0016/www.nla.gov.au/openpublish/index.php/aja/article/view/3520/4210.html. There’s testimony and evidence that these problems occur in adoptees even in the very “best” adoption scenarios. Nancy Verrier, The Primal Wound; Understanding the Adopted Child, (Baltimore: Gateway Press Inc, 2014), 7; Martin Reite, Conny Seiler and Robert Short, “Loss of Your Mother Is More than Loss of a Mother,” American Journal of Psychiatry 135 (1978) 370-71; John Triseliotis, In search of origins: the experiences of adopted people, (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1973). Yet in wider society there’s “a kind of denial that at the moment of birth and the next few days, weeks or months in the life of a child, when he is separated from his mother and handed over.., he could be profoundly affected by the experience”. Nancy Verrier, The Primal Wound, 13. There’s nothing to suggest that a neonate removed from their mother for surrogacy purposes will be any less stressed by the loss than those removed for adoption. This is because neonates don’t understand that they have been implanted, that their DNA may differ from that of the woman with whom they are symbiotically growing, nor that the woman in whom they gestate isn’t considered their mother but merely a surrogate for their mother under a surrogacy contract. Nor is it likely a neonate would use their five senses to wriggle toward a nipple of their donor in the hours after birth. Rachel Eddie, “Heartwarming video reveals newborn baby's natural instinct to 'breast crawl' - as they search for their mother's nipples HOURS after they are born,” Daily Mail Australia, 11 April, 2016, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-3533418/Newborn-baby-breast-crawl-instinct-mother-s-nipples-revealed-video.html#ixzz4eVSaDs9R. In this way the immediate impacts of mother loss are not differentiated between those caused for the purposes of adoption or surrogacy. Testimony from Adoptees, Adoptive Mothers and Professionals The testimony of adopted people is, therefore, the closest we can currently get to numerous speaking subjects for the infant party in both adoption and surrogacy and, as such, society has a duty to listen to them when canvassing the ethics of surrogacy. Adoptee activists claim that they live their lives trying to manage in a myriad different ways the debilitating lifelong impacts of maternal-neonate separation - that is, the loss of their gestational mothers at birth - and not only the disconnection from identity and ancestry that this entailed. When adoptees gained access to their hospital records, some discovered their distress from removal documented. A case in point are the writer’s own hospital records which record my condition after removal at birth until discharged from the hospital at the end of the week. Each night records that I “appear satisfactory” yet qualifies this with comments that indicate a level of distress. I was born and removed immediately from my mother and, while in another room, her breasts were bound for three days to suppress lactation. The day after my birth the entry reads “not sucking well;” on the fourth day, “remains slow to feed;” the fifth, “unsettled and screaming all night – glucose offered with little effect;” the sixth, “appears satisfactory although extremely difficult to settle during the night;” and on the eighth, “cried most of early night – not relieved by glucose water. Small amount only taken at am feed.” St Margaret Hospital Ward Report for “Girl Rheinberger - BFA (Baby For Adoption),” 1972. I suffered no medical conditions and these records indicate that my post-natal distress increased the longer my mother’s absence was prolonged. It isn’t only adoptees who testify that maternal-neonatal separation is a trauma for all babies. Deanna Shrodes (adoptee), “Ask a Therapist: How is Trauma part of Adoption? An interview with Corie Skolnick,” Adoptee Restoration, accessed 28 August, 2017, http://www.adopteerestoration.com/2014/02/ask-therapist-how-is-trauma-part-of.html. Even adoptive parents, the party in adoption least likely to want to admit that there’s something wrong with the adoption ideal of quick, early removal, have been forced by experience to observe its falsity. Nancy Verrier, adoptive mother and psychotherapist, writes: If anyone had told me when we brought home our three-day-old daughter on Christmas Eve, 1969, that rearing an adopted child would be different from rearing one’s own biological child, I, like many new and enthusiastic adoptive parents, would have laughed at them and said, “Of course it won’t be different! What can a tiny baby know? We will love her and give her a wonderful home.” My belief was that love would conquer all. What I discovered, however, was that it was easier for us to give her love than it was for her to accept it.... I was to discover during my 10 years of research that this testing-out behavior was one of two diametrically opposed responses to having been abandoned, the other being a tendency toward acquiescence, compliance and withdrawal. Verrier, The Primal Wound, xiii-xiv. Gabor Matè, a physician specializing in neurology, psychiatry, psychology and treatment of addiction, claims that with adoption “at birth you have a huge loss, even if the adoptive parents are right there in the birthing room…. [A]dopted children, although they cannot recall the separation from the birth mother, remember it in the form of a deep sense of abandonment that they tend to have – this is emotional memory.” Gabor Matè, interview by Alison Morris in Healing Our Children 2016 World Summit, podcast, MP3 audio, 16.46, accessed 28 August, 2017, http://healingourchildrenworldsummit.com/uploads/3/4/6/7/34672686/gabormate.mp3 Paul Sunderland, a specialist addiction counsellor with more than 25 years experience, agrees that, for adoptees, there’s no relinquishment without grief, that the loss is experienced as “life threatening” and is a trauma, and that this pre-verbal experience can’t be recalled “but is remembered.” Sunderland, Adoption & Addiction, 4:40, 8:35, 11:15. Dr. Wendy McCord, a pre and perinatal psychologist and family therapist, claims that “[a]ll adopted babies, I think you can pretty much say, are in shock…. They need to be held a lot, they need to be given true empathy, and what they do needs to be interpreted in terms of their loss. And parents who are in denial of this add another trauma to what the baby's already suffered”. Marcy Axness, “A Therapist Counsels Parents of Adopted Babies, Hospitalized Babies and other babies separated from mothers at birth,” Healing Resources.info; preventing and healing stress related problems, 2004, accessed 28 August, 2017, http://www.healingresources.info/article_axness2.htm. Testimony from the Donor Conceived Because modern surrogacy is so new, most of the people removed from their mothers under contracts are still children The first surrogacy contract was written in 1980 and in 1985 a woman carried the first successful gestational surrogate pregnancy. Robert Coles, “So, you fell in love with your baby; review of The Story of America's First Legal Surrogate Mother by Elizabeth Kane,” New York Times Review, June 26, 1988, http://www.nytimes.com/1988/06/26/books/so-you-fell-in-love-with-your-baby.html?pagewanted=all. and interviews with, or studies on, these children cannot even begin to reflect its impacts. Susan Golombok et al., “Families created through surrogacy: Mother-child relationships and children’s psychological adjustment at age 7” Developmental Psychology 47(6) (2011): 1579–88, https://doi.org/10.1037/a0025292 and “Children born through reproductive donation: a longitudinal study of psychological adjustment,” Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 54 (2013): 653–60, https://doi.org/10.1111/jcpp.12015. Despite this, and despite implicit familial and societal socialization, the voices of protest are starting to be heard. Brian, The Son of a Surrogate Blog, June 16, 2014, http://sonofasurrogate.tripod.com: “You can dress it up with as many pretty words as you want. You can wrap it up in a silk freaking scarf. You can pretend these are not your children. You can say it is a gift…. But the fact is that someone has contracted you to make a child, give up your parental rights and hand over your flesh-and-blood child. I don’t care if you think I am not your child, what about what I think? Maybe I know I am your child;” The Other Side of Surrogacy Blog, http://theothersideofsurrogacy.blogspot.com.au. Jessica Kern, a woman removed from her gestational mother to fulfill a surrogacy contract, says of surrogacy: We have so much evidence in the adoption communities that it’s detrimental to a child to separate them from their biology unless it’s a necessity, but then we turn around and do it intentionally in this arena, and we’re supposed to be grateful and all that stuff. The more you look into it the more problems you find… On the outside looking in it might look like it’s just a “couple” - but it just gets nastier and nastier the deeper you look in it. Centre for Bioethics and Culture Network, “Jennifer Lahl interview with Jessica Kern,” Twelfth Annual Paul Ramsey Award Dinner, 2005, video, accessed 28 August, 2017, https://vimeo.com/125756487. When Jessica talks about being expected “to be grateful and stuff” she is referring to the socialisation of children born under surrogacy contracts to approve of surrogacy and celebrate their removal from their mothers, and all the other expectations created by ideology formed in the rise of adoption markets: that you will be grateful that you exist (and weren’t aborted for instance) and therefore cannot question the ethics of your origins; “It’s quite possible to be grateful to be alive and to question some aspects of your conception.” Barry Stevens (donor conceived) in Anonymous Father’s Day, Jennifer Lahl, Centre for Bioethics and Culture, video, accessed 9 September, 2017, http://www.anonymousfathersday.com. that removal doesn’t damage you; that the woman who bore and birthed you isn’t your real mother but only a surrogate; that you are either goods or “a gift” to be exchanged and that this isn’t commodification. If you contradict this ideology your voice is suppressed. Alana Newman, “The Anonymous Us Project,” video, accessed 28 August, 2017, https://anonymousus.org: “I was shocked when the fertility industry literally ripped the microphone out of my hands. This project is a response to censorship.” The development is clear: prior to modern surrogacy the cruelty of removal of neonates for adoption has been justified on the grounds of “saving” them from illegitimacy or “rescuing” them from orphanages or inadequate mothers. Surrogacy takes this a step further by not even requiring such justifications and “in this arena” people are created expressly for the purpose of removal, with the possible added bonus for the recipient parents of being genetically related to the child they receive. In this way surrogacy is a development of adoption ideology, existing to serve the adoption industry, the medical profession, anti-abortionists, and anyone who wants a child they didn’t give birth to, including abusers, paedophiles and murderers. Nino Bucci, “Man pleads guilty to sexually abusing his twin surrogate babies” Sydney Morning Herald, April 22, 2016, http://www.smh.com.au/national/man-pleads-guilty-to-sexually-abusing-his-twin-surrogate-babies-20160421-goc83m.html; “Pound Pup Legacy; Exposing the dark side of adoption,” accessed 28 August, 2017, http://poundpuplegacy.org. As with adoption, there are no follow-up welfare checks and, like adoption, no statistics on abuse and suicide in artificial families kept. Your Moral Right to be Parented by your Gestational Mother There’s a presumptive moral right of individuals to keep and raise their own biological children. Anca Gheaus, “The right to parent one’s biological baby,” Journal of Political Philosophy 20, no. 4 (2012): 432-55, https://philpapers.org/rec/GHETRT. This moral right is augmented for gestational mothers “because of the physical, psychological, social and financial costs of pregnancy and birth, most of which can only be shouldered by pregnant women,” Gheaus, “The Normative Importance,” 23. “On the serious harms that a miscarriage can entail see Ann Cahill, Kathryn Norlock, and Byron Stoyles (eds.), ‘Miscarriage, Reproductive Loss, and Fetal Death,’ Journal of Social Philosophy, 46, no. 1 (2015),” Gheaus, 23, n. 2. See also Amy Mullin, Reconceiving Pregnancy and Childcare; Ethics, Experience and Reproductive Labor, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 39-40, 43, 64, 67. and the fact that, during pregnancy, “expectant mothers form a poignantly embodied, but also emotional, intimate relationship with their fetus”. Gheaus, 22-23. Anca Gheaus, in “The normative importance of pregnancy challenges surrogacy contracts,” claims that these two related features together with other conditions, These other conditions have to do with the would-be-mother satisfying certain criteria for parental adequacy. Gheaus, 23, n. 1. “ground a moral right to keep one’s birth baby – a right which is simultaneously grounded in the interest of the parent and in the interest of the child.” Gheaus, 22-23. Gheaus reminds us that “[i]t is important, to this analysis, to add the perspective of the baby, who also usually bonds with its mother whose voice, heartbeat etc., [sic] can recognise during the last phase of gestation. DeCasper and Fifer, “Of Human Bonding”; Beauchemin et al., “Mother and Stranger.” That the newborn, too, is attached to the gestational mother… provides an additional, and child-centred justification, for the moral right to parent the baby one has gestated”. Gheaus, “The Normative Importance,” 28. But the neonate’s attachment to the gestational mother does more than just provide a “child-centred justification” for the gestational mother’s moral right. Gheaus, 23. It simultaneously creates a moral right for the child to be parented by her or his gestational mother. This right defeats the claims of any other person to parent, including a gamete or embryo donor, and even the father, because it emanates from a pre-existing embodied relationship, the destruction of which damages both mother and child. Furthermore, this right defeats any claim by the gestational mother to transfer her moral right to parent her child because, as Gheaus claims, “if part of what explains this moral right [to parent] is the newborn's own attachment to her or his gestational mother, then the surrogate's moral right… cannot, in principle be transferred to a third party and therefore surrogacy contracts ought to be always seen as void”. Gheaus, 23. The Ethics of Surrogacy When the phenomenology of pregnancy is examined, as it must be when ascertaining the ethics of surrogacy, “[b]iology turns out to play an important role… thanks to the biological processes of parenthood, independent of genetic connections”. Gheaus, 21. Gheaus concludes, “one way or another, pregnancy itself fosters this relationship and hence taking babies away from their birth parents is morally wrong”. Gheaus, 23. The immorality of neonate removal is intrinsic to all forms of surrogacy which, viewed in historical perspective, are the product of twentieth century forced adoption ideology, with its “clean breaks,” its “blank slates,” The Senate, Commonwealth Contribution, 22-23, 2.16-2.17, http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Community_Affairs/Completed_inquiries/2010-13/commcontribformerforcedadoption/report/c02. its commodification of children, and its denial of the impact of maternal-neonate separation upon them, meeting turn-of-the-century assisted reproduction technologies. Denise Cuthbert and Patricia Fronek, “Perfecting adoption? Reflections on the rise of commercial offshore surrogacy and family formation in Australia,” Australian Institute of Family Studies, Families, policy and the law, Selected essays on contemporary issues for Australia, 7 (2014) 55-66, https://aifs.gov.au/publications/families-policy-and-law/7-perfecting-adoption-reflections-rise-commercial-offshore; Brigid Donovan, “The Baby Maker,” Australian Story, (Sydney: Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 2011), http://www.abc.net.au/austory/transcripts/s289014.htm. Verrier once asked “[w]hat if the most abusive thing which can happen to a child is that he is taken from his mother?” Verrier, The Primal Wound, 13. Certainly it may not be the most abusive thing – but the point being made is that adoption advocates knowingly ignore, or deny outright, For example, Sir Martin Narey’s abstract for the Connections for Life; National Permanency Conference, Sydney, 16-17 November, 2017, accessed August 16, 2017, http://www.connectionsforlife.com.au/page/50/speakers-abstracts. the effects of maternal-neonate separation. In view of the available evidence and the testimony of adoptees, adoptive mothers, professionals and the donor conceived; in lieu of conclusive proof to the contrary, that is, proof that babies don’t suffer in any way upon removal from their mothers; and until thorough long-term studies are conducted on people who have suffered maternal-neonate separation are done to prove that there are no negative short or long-term impacts upon them, the baby trade that is all forms of surrogacy should be outlawed, as it is in Sweden, Switzerland, Iceland, Finland, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Quebec, Colombia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and parts of the United States. This must be done because all forms of surrogacy are cruel to neonates and violate the moral rights, needs and desires of the human being created. Laws forbid the early removal of certain mammals from their gestational mothers yet no similar laws protect the welfare of human beings. Animal Welfare Code of Practice: Animals in Pet Shops, NSW Department of Primary Industries, 2008, 17, 10.1.9, http://www.dpi.nsw.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0019/244018/Animal-welfare-code-of-practice-animals-in-pet-shops.pdf. Even if people refuse to accept, against all available evidence, that the loss of the gestational mother creates a lasting trauma for neonates, is it really not generally agreed upon that unnecessarily stressing one is unacceptable? Elsevier, “Maternal separation stresses the baby.” Works Cited Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. Adoptions Australia 2015-16. Child Welfare Series 65. Canberra: AIHW, 2016. http://www.aihw.gov.au/WorkArea/DownloadAsset.aspx?id=60129558075. American Academy of Paediatrics. Helping Foster and Adoptive Families Cope With Trauma. American Academy of Pediatrics and Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption, 2015. https://www.aap.org/en-us/advocacy-and-policy/aap-health-initiatives/healthy-foster-care-america/Documents/Guide.pdf. 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