Those of us old enough and foolish enough to recall the abortion referendum of 2018 in Ireland will be familiar with the concept of “Gilead” and the ubiquity, in that campaign, of Handmaids Tale costumes.
Drawn from the pages of Margaret Attwood’s masterpiece feminist novel, Gilead is a fictional dystopian world where women of reproductive age are consigned to the role of baby-producing indentured service in the homes of wealthy, white, patriarchal families. The child-bearing women of Gilead have no other value: They exist to bear children, and for no other reason. They are forced to wear red robes, and white bonnets, to indicate their status.
During the years leading into the repeal vote in 2018, a favourite cosplay activity for pro-choice activist was to cast Irish women in a similar role, the implication being that while abortion remained unconstitutional, Irish women were little more than indentured baby makers:
The handmaids are revolting. #repealthe8th @RosaWomen pic.twitter.com/bPMyRNPpzG
— Paul Murphy 🏳️⚧️ (@paulmurphy_TD) September 20, 2017
This was, of course, never the case. In a political campaign, though, perhaps a little exaggeration might be forgiven.
What, though, are we to make of this?
‘We are pregnant!’- Brian Dowling and partner Arthur Gourounlian announce they’re expecting their first child. https://t.co/RV6q7AOEw6
— Irish Independent (@Independent_ie) May 5, 2022
Brian Dowling and his partner Arthur Gourounlian have announced that they’re expecting their first child.
The Dancing With The Stars judge revealed a couple of months ago that he and Big Brother star husband wanted to have a baby but there had been “a lot of setbacks”.
However, the couple shared the news on Instagram today that their surrogate is pregnant, and posted a video of their ecstatic reactions to finding out.
Mr. Dowling and Mr. Gourounlian have not, of course, done anything illegal, whatever their arrangements may be. But the fact that they have legally purchased, rented, or otherwise, perhaps even through the altruism of a donor, acquired a womb does not make their action any less ethically dubious. After all, they have relegated the mother of their child to non-legal parent, and acquired her services as little more than a human incubator. Her purpose is to produce a child for them, and then hand it over. The parallels with “Gilead” are not hard to spot.
The Irish media are avowedly determined not to discuss the ethics of surrogacy. That reluctance is not Mr. Dowling’s fault, or that of his partner, but their case is nevertheless illustrative. After all, their child is being born without a mother by design. Their baby, once it is born, will be taken from its mother. It will be denied the opportunity – again, by design – to form the most powerful and foundational natural ties.
This is something that progressives have no difficulty recognising as a wrong, incidentally, when it is done with animals.
There are three things here which are worth saying: The first is that nobody has a right to a child. Many couples, whether due to infertility, or because of biological impossibility, will never be able to conceive and carry a child naturally. That is always a tragedy – the drive and instinct to have children is powerfully embedded in us by evolution, and the inability to have a child can therefore be a source of immense anguish. Nobody would fail to sympathise with people in that position, but at the same time nobody has an obligation to hand those couples a child to make up for their sense of loss.
The second is that children have natural rights: They are not commodities to be bought and sold. We would be horrified, for example, by the news that an Irish mum had put her baby up for sale on the internet. But the increasingly popular practice of commercial surrogacy, even when regulated, amounts to the same thing. Commerical surrogacy is essentially a fancy name for buying a baby from its mother. The mother in a commercial arrangement gets money, and in return signs away her baby. The baby gets no say in the matter. This all being legal and above board does not make it right.
The third thing to say is that it is not true that Mr. Dowling and his partner are pregnant. “We are pregnant” in this case is a false statement. Neither Mr. Dowling nor his partner are capable, physically, of pregnancy. A woman is pregnant. She has – as far as the news is concerned – no name, and is referred to only as their surrogate.
This is all more than a little obscene. And it is much closer to the Handmaid’s Tale than anything in Irish law prior to 2018.
There’s a final point here, too: Without wishing to pick on Mr. Dowling and his partner unnecessarily, they had other options. There are children in the world who do not have parents as a result of a tragedy, or a war, or a famine. Those children need loving homes. Adoption could in this case, as in many others, have helped both prospective parents, and child.
Creating a child, and then taking it from its mother, is an unnatural and indecent act – and most of us recognise that instinctively. It reduces the woman to little more than an incubator. Perhaps the Irish media does not want to tread on the feel-good factor from stories like this. But for most people reading, there’s no feel-good factor. It’s more a feel-weird factor. Because in our hearts, most of us know this is deeply wrong.