Barriers n obstacles
Well you see it’s like this…
Male same-sex couples can’t reproduce. It’s that simple. They don’t need reproductive healthcare services because of the not being able to reproduce thing. Female same-sex couples can’t reproduce on their own either, but the fix for that is technologically quite simple and quick and entirely non-invasive. It’s very different from pregnancy that way. The obstacles that exist for male couples that don’t exist for straight couples are all about the presence or absence of a uterus. That’s not because of unfair laws or homophobia, it’s just how female and male bodies work.
Harrop puts it the way he does because he wants us to think that access to female reproduction is there for the asking, or taking.
He’s a medical doctor.
Good thing you mentioned that, I was wondering if maybe he was a doctor of physics or something. But I shouldn’t be surprised; we already have the example of PZ to show that scientific knowledge is no barrier to motivated reasoning.
Yep. I absolutely boggled when he wrote that “sex is a spectrum”. A working biologist, saying claptrap like that.
It reminds me of an old joke. Let’s modify that:
This brouhaha is heavy on both the bros and the haha. It’s remarkable to see Benny repeatedly assert that the government owes him the use of a woman’s body, and all his pals back him up.
Sounds a lot like Jordan Peterson. Give the incels women (no matter if the women don’t want to be given). Give gay males use of a woman (no matter if the woman doesn’t want to be used). They are only women; they don’t matter as much as the happiness of the men.
Presumably the reason the guy wants IVF treatment for the surrogate mother is because he finds the idea of having sex with her distasteful. That’s the barrier and obstacle in the gay couple’s way. The main requirement in the UK for a woman to get IVF treatment on the NHS (i.e. for free) is that she has tried, and repeatedly failed, to get pregnant, so it really isn’t clear that the gay couple is being treated differently from straight couples.
I think surrogates are by definition not impregnated. The egg comes from another woman and is implanted in the “surrogate.” If the woman providing the egg is also happy to gestate the fetus then there’s no need for a “surrogate.” I think. Could be wrong; correct me if so.
The general smears don’t help, do they? if you are ‘gender-critical’ (I suppose these pathetic labels are supposed to make things look official and scientific), you are pretty well bound to be all sorts of other nasty things as well. (I think I saw ‘anti-Semitic’ added in in some previous tweet, though perhaps my memory is at fault.)
Men are certainly entitled to reproductive health services, surely, if they have a low sperm-count or some other problem? I can’t see what these ungentle men are complaining about so bitterly.
Regarding PZ, one thing that reading certain science blogs (in addition to the examples of J.H. Haldane & Thomas Watson) has brought home to me is that, outside their field of expertise, scientists are often no better, and in certain cases, worse, than the rest of us. The trouble is that, being scientists, they suppose they are not.
No, a surrogate can be the biological mother of the child. She bears the child for someone else, and gives up parental rights.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrogacy
Speaking of PZ, he just posted this article
https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2020/09/23/the-most-tin-eared-neo-lib-proposal-yet/
where he wrote
So it seems that he still thinks that women are the humans bearing children.
Strangely, he was not chided for being transphobic. I wonder why….
I have just read PZ’s article, and in this case at least he seems to say the right things about what sounds a rather silly book.
Replying to Ophelia at #6: good question, so I’ve had a look at some fertility websites and it seems that we’re both right. There are two types of surrogacy. Gestational Surrogacy is the type you’re thinking of and involves IVF; Traditional Surrogacy is the type I’m thinking of and doesn’t involve IVF (and the surrogate mother is therefore also the bological mother).
Thing is, the surrogate mother is *a* biological mother… the uterus, the blood, most of the material that makes up the baby, it all comes from the surrogate mother and the environment shapes the potential human being…
Dolly the Sheep wasn’t a perfect clone of her mother, but even if she were she’d still be a changed product from the original through the virtue of growing inside a different creature.
Maybe these guys think “reproductive healthcare services” include the provision of a woman? I mean, if you need dialysis, you don’t have to bring your own dialysis machine, do you?
You mean I don’t really need that dialysis machine I bought and stored in the basement just in case? Wow. I wonder if I can get a refund.
Seriously, any group of people that refer to women as “uterus havers” can only really relate to women based on our ability to give them babies. It’s all very….1950s.
Iknklast, I hope you kept the receipt!