#reproductive exploitation

[worm-serious-talks]

Marley’s statements about his daughter’s birth aren’t just alarming — they’re a brutal example of how dehumanizing surrogacy really is. And the worst part is how casually he tells the story, like it’s some charming anecdote.

He has two children, both born via surrogacy. But what he said about the birth of his younger daughter is especially disturbing: that the doctor mentioned heavy bleeding, that they offered an alternative method to protect both the baby and the woman giving birth — but he insisted on a natural delivery. In the end, they had to intervene because the woman was bleeding out.

Do we get that? He insisted. In a birth that wasn’t his. On a body that wasn’t his.

This isn’t just about Marley. This is about a system that allows someone to insist on what happens to someone else’s body. A system that turns pregnancy into a service, childbirth into a product, and gestating bodies into tools. Surrogacy isn’t progress, it isn’t freedom, and it sure as hell isn’t love — it’s reproductive exploitation.

It doesn’t matter how many contracts are signed. It doesn’t matter how much money is paid or how much it looks like an “agreement between consenting adults.” Ignoring structural inequalities, economic pressure, and the lack of real alternatives is a deliberate choice.

Surrogacy commodifies women and turns children into goods. There is nothing ethical about that. And no, it’s not “just another choice.” It’s an industry built on vulnerable bodies and people with power willing to use them.

Surrogacy is violence. It’s a form of exploitation. And it needs to be called out.

[erebusvincent]

"The women were held captive on a 'human farm' in the eastern European country of Georgia by a criminal organisation led by Chinese criminals, who sold their eggs on the black market...

The women were pumped up with hormones to stimulate their ovaries and were forced to have their eggs removed once a month."

Surrogacy is the reason for this. Both are abominable. Women’s bodies are not commodities to be bought and sold and harvested for parts.

[crooked-wasteland]

Something New?

I have been toying with the idea of uploading some small, unscripted, podcast-style talks that I have anyway with my spouse. Discussing sociology, philosophy, media. They are definitely train of consciousness and get badly derailed, but that's a bit of the fun? The audio quality isn't that great. We just sit outside and talk and smoke. But we sometimes have some interesting things to say.

I figure I can probably upload them here as sound bites and, if you care to listen, I'm open for feedback and interaction. Questions or topics you'd like us to discuss. I'm not too invested in the idea of doing these live or even at a great production value. So I am not expecting most people to be interested. But I thought I'd just throw this out because I enjoy these conversations and think there is some good content in the messiness of it. This is typically how ideas for essays get started.

But it is very, very unscripted. And as such, it is highly tangential and gets lost in the sauce of things sometimes. This one, for example, started off for 2 seconds being about Helluva and immediately became a dissection of Ayn Rand and Bioshock.

Where it got lost was how Stolas' early introductions offered a lot of opportunity to dissect Ayn Rand's Egotist Philosophy and how his seeking personal fulfillment can be healthy, even at the cost of hurting those around him. But how Egotist Philosophy is damaging at its core while Egotist Psychology is a healthier approach to embracing our radical freedom and what those differences are.

Spoiler alert, we never got that far. Bioshock got in the way. But it was a conversation I found interesting.

Apologies in advance if you simply cannot stand the sound of my voice. There is a reason I typically write and don't create youtube videos. Also apologies for it being on a Google drive account and not uploaded elsewhere. It's not the most elegant of approaches but this is just an idea.

[haggishlyhagging]

Another fundamental principle operating in the defense of technological reproduction is that persons have a biological need to reproduce. Terms like genetic continuity, biological fulfillment, reproductive imperative, and maternal instinct mystify motherhood and fatherhood, detracting from our ability to recognize them as personal and social relationships. When male claims to children are asserted, as in surrogacy disputes, we hear about men's right to genetic "fulfillment." When new technological procedures are launched for public acceptance, we hear about "women's natural need" to reproduce. Patrick Steptoe, lab parent of the world's first IVF baby, asserted, "It is a fact that there is a biological drive to reproduce. Women who deny this drive, or in whom it is frustrated, show disturbances in other ways."

What defenders of new reproductive techniques regard as natural, feminists challenge as political. As feminists have attacked the false essentialism that the male sexual urge is uncontrollable and therefore men need prostitutes to satisfy their sexual needs, so too feminists oppose the idea that reproduction is a biological imperative. Feminists challenge men's need for so-called surrogates in order to fulfill their supposed genetic destiny of fathering children. Technological reproduction has also been grounded in women's need for children, thus providing the excuse for many invasive and mutilating procedures. It is rationalized that women who submit to such techniques are fulfilling their basic mothering instinct. In both examples, anything a man or woman does to procreate is a natural urge, an instinctual force, that must have an outlet. The difference is that men do not usually consent to their own exploitation but to the exploitation of a woman, whereas a woman undergoing invasive reproductive medicine must submit to a violation of her own bodily integrity, even if she consents to the procedure.

Since the nineteenth century especially, the so-called laws of nature have come to be understood more and more in scientific terms. Scientists analyze, dissect, and categorize what were formerly natural or divine dictums such as racial and gender differences. Procreation is perceived as a law of nature that, in the context of new reproductive technologies, acquires an expanded scientific mandate. Scientific legitimacy makes it more difficult to challenge the medical model of procreation as a natural law demanding fulfillment.

At this historical point when feminists have de-essentialized motherhood—politicizing the natural definition of women as mothers and distinguishing between motherhood as experience and motherhood as institution—along come the reproductive medical fundamentalists to put mothering back into the sphere of women's natural destiny. The new reproductive technologies represent an appropriation by male scientific experts of the female body, depoliticizing reproduction and motherhood by recasting these roles as fundamental instincts that must be satisfied.

-Janice G. Raymond, Women as Wombs: Reproductive Technologies and the Battle Over Women’s Freedom

[abuddyforeveryseason]

Here comes the sun, doo-doop-doo-doo...

It's the Buddy for May 9th. the sun! You know, the incredibly old giant ball of fire around which everyone you know is rotating. Do not look directly into it.

The first drawing I posted, for May 12th, was the moon. So, it's pretty fitting that the sun will be one of the last.

You know, I'm not really an artist. My dad is. He's not like, a famous painter or anything, but, he can paint - he can have an idea for something, sketch out the perspective on a piece of canvas, mix the color in the palette and come up with a finished, professional-looking painting.

He's also way into cars and motorcycles, so it's hard to put him in a box like that. Parents are complicated creatures.

I have eight things in my house that could actually count as "works of art". Two of my dad's paintings - one he made in the seventies, the other, a few years ago. Three made by my aunt (his sister), I put in the living/dining area over the table. She really liked my comments on them so my cousin gave them to me. A reproduction of The Persistence of Memory over my bed - the same one every college kid who didn't like Fight Club had. A reproduction of an abstract Jack Kirby painting over my TV I got from The Jack Kirby Collector. And a reproduction of the French poster for silent film serial The Exploits of Elaine, which I've seen on the background of Friends for eleven years.

I think it's an okay-looking place. Not as well-cleaned as some people would like, but I'm comfortable.

[o4o41]

Very radical take. Rumi comes from Atlantis-like place, a matriarchal heaven. Got destroyed and stigmatised.

[fanfic-lover-girl]

Eggsploitation

This was an informative watch. If you are considering egg donation, watching this may be worth your time.

Just another way women get the short end of the stick when it comes to sex and reproduction...

Every time I watch videos like this, I dislike my female biology - I physically feel uncomfortable.

[coochiequeens]

It's not everyday this blog agrees with the Pope but when it comes to surrogacy we agree that it exploits women and babies.

Rome — Pope Francis on Monday called for surrogate motherhood to be banned worldwide, calling the practice of surrogacy "deplorable" and saying an unborn child "cannot be turned into an object of trafficking."

In a wide-ranging speech to ambassadors of the 184 countries that have diplomatic relations with the Vatican, the pope said surrogacy represented a grave violation of the dignity of the woman and the child and that it exploited surrogate mothers' financial circumstances.

Pope Francis leads the Angelus prayer at the Vatican, Jan. 7, 2024.VATICAN MEDIA/­HANDOUT VIA REUTERS

"A child is always a gift and never the basis of a commercial contract," Francis said.

In 2022, the pope called surrogacy "inhuman," saying "women, almost all poor, are exploited, and children are treated like goods."

Laws on surrogacy differ widely around the world. Only a few countries, and some states in the U.S., allow commercial surrogacy. Others allow "altruistic" surrogacy, where no money is exchanged.  Many other nations, including most in Europe, have banned it altogether.

Francis included surrogacy in his list of conflicts and divisions threatening world peace in his annual speech to the diplomat corps, sometimes referred to as the pontiff's "state of the world" address. This year he also reflected on the ongoing wars in the Gaza Strip and Ukraine, the immigration crisis, climate change, arms proliferation, antisemitism, the persecution of Christians and artificial intelligence, among other topics.

The pope said the wars in Gaza and Ukraine prove that all conflicts end up indiscriminately affecting civilian populations where they are fought. 

"We must not forget that grave violations of international humanitarian law are war crimes," he said.

[flamecoloredparadise]

don't know how to feel about per my ritfverse timeline 002 is born spring 1961 at the latest, which means henry became a father at like.... fifteen. same age caroline was when she had her abortion and same age isaacs mom was when she got pregnant...

[fatfemmefreaquency]

by all accounts some of the women don’t actually want anything to do with him, so we’ll see how the move everyone into a mansion plan goes I guess

unfortunately he holds the purse strings and doesn’t like paying child support if they don’t keep quiet about disliking him—and he bankrupted grimes through litigation when she tried to get custody of their kids

so maybe they’ll comply with the big happy family plan

but most of them are not really on team elon so much as they were into his whole deal at one point (a long time ago for some, like his first wife) and have been coerced to stay and keep up some semblance of cordiality

if it means leaving their kids to musk’s influence or potentially losing a court case over custody because elon isn’t happy with the arrangement any more I suspect most of these women would choose the simpler path & decide to not risk their parental rights after the grimes debacle

no one wants to have to publicly beg the father of their child for visitation on the bot and troll ridden microblogging platform he bought

Every time I learn something new about Elon Musk I feel like I'm being trolled. He has a daughter named Exa Dark Sideræl? That can't be right.

[divorceblogger]

milchick is being infantilised, degraded and his erudition is viewed as a threat by a company run by white dynastic leaders who interfere with people’s bodies at very intimate levels and exploit them for labour while controlling their inborn right to exercise their reproductive & sexual rights specifically while referring to them as violent, unpredictable people (helena calls them ‘animals’ and exploits mark for sexual pleasure). while keeping them entrapped in workspaces which they’re not allowed to evacuate. I think people should have smarter things to say than “it’s funny that milchick was doing a paperclip task”.

[drdemonprince]

I don’t mean to come off as rude or anything but how do non-passing trans men benefit from patriarchal or transmisogynistic systems? /gen please, I’m sorry

If you are a non-passing trans man, that means you are, broadly speaking, probably categorizable by most people as belonging to the gender group you were assigned at birth. While this is likely to be a highly dysphoric experience for you, and subjects you to a lot of forms of misogyny, it also means that you reap the benefits of being perceived to conform to one's assigned gender category, and a gender category that does also confer some privileges.

There are a great many privileges afforded to cis women compared to other gender minorities. You are not treated legally or socially the way that trans women are. You are not seen by default as a predator or a pervert, variance in your gender expression is more likely to be seen as acceptable or at least understandable rather than perverse and dangerous, legally you are not marked as the other, and if anyone does target you for violence or state repression by virtue of your transness, you have the power to turn down a whole hell of a lot of that heat by clarifying that you are not a trans woman. Some amount of expressing or aspiring toward masculinity in those viewed as cis women is tolerated in society, and showing masculine mannerisms or communication styles is sometimes downright rewarded even in non-passing trans men.

Within spaces that are for nonbinary or trans people, you can move with complete freedom as a non-passing trans man, viewed as welcome, safe to be around, desirable, understanding of the community's shared struggles, typical, expected, unremarkable, relatable, and normal. Every single trans space will understand you as an explicable member of it, and not police your identity the way they would the belongingness, safety, or legitimacy of a trans woman. You can find depictions of trans people similar to yourself in a lot of media, and that media will generally not depict you as a dangerous serial killer pedophile (whereas most of the media depictions of trans women do). You can use dating apps both for men or for women with a very low likelihood of being kicked off.

By virtue of not being a trans woman, you can access women's reproductive healthcare centers, women's shelters, women's sports teams and clubs, compete in women's sports free from transphobic discrimination, and participate generally in social spaces designed for gender minorities -- this again might be a *highly* dysphoric experience for you and not feel at all like a privilege, but it does mean you have access to resources that others do not.

By virtue of being a man, you have a degree of psychological remove from the "female" roles and standards imposed on you. You still experience sexism, discrimination, and are held to unfair standards to whatever extent you do move socially as a cis woman, but you also have a distance from those standards truly being relevant to you both psychologically and insofar as you read to others as moving beyond that categorization. You will always occupy a position that is less reviled, exploited, excluded, and feared than that of trans women in society, and you can utilize that distance from trans women to protect yourself and socially benefit whenever you want to, whether you actually do so or not.

I think it is important for people who feel resistance to this idea to think about how all of the challenges and unfairness that they very much *do* face would be amplified and rendered more complex and dangerous if they were having to move through the world as a trans woman. And if you can't imagine how *that* would make things harder, then you need a lot more friends who are trans women.

[extinctionstories]

On April 19th, 1987, a bird known as Adult Condor 9 was captured in the Bitter Creek National Wildlife Refuge, near Bakersfield, California. After decades ravaged by the threats of lead-poisoning and pesticide exposure, and intense debate over the ethics of captivity, it had been determined that captive breeding was the final hope to save a species. As his designation might suggest, AC-9 was the ninth condor to be captured for the new program; he was also the last.

As the biology team transported the seven-year-old male to the safety of the San Diego Wild Animal Park, his species, the California Condor, North America's largest bird, became extinct in its native range. It was Easter Sunday—a fitting day for the start of a resurrection.

At the time of AC-9's capture, the total world population of California condors constituted just twenty-seven birds. The majority of them represented ongoing conservation attempts: immature birds, taken from the wild as nestlings and eggs to be captive-reared in safety, with the intention of re-release into the wild. Now, efforts turned fully towards the hope of captive breeding.

Captive breeding is never a sure-fire bet, especially for sensitive, slow-reproducing species like the condor. Animals can and do go extinct even when all individuals are successfully shielded from peril and provided with ideal breeding conditions. Persistence in captivity is not the solution to habitat destruction and extirpation—but it can buy valuable time for a species that needs it.

Thankfully, for the California condor, it paid off.

The birds defied expectations, with an egg successfully hatched at the San Diego Zoo the very next year. Unlike many other birds of prey, which may produce clutches of up to 5 hatchlings, the California condor raises a single chick per breeding season, providing care for the first full year of its life, and, as a consequence, often not nesting at all in the year following the birth of a chick. This, combined with the bird's slow maturation (taking six to eight years to start breeding), presented a significant challenge. However, biologists were able to exploit another quirk of the bird's breeding cycle: its ability to double-clutch.

Raising a single offspring per year is a massive risk in a world full of threats, and the California condor's biology has provided it with a back-up plan: in years when a chick or egg has been lost, condors will often re-nest with a second egg. To take advantage of this tendency, eggs were selectively removed from birds in the captive breeding program, which would then lay a replacement, greatly increasing their reproduction rate.

And what of the eggs that were taken? The tendency of hatchlings to imprint is well-known, and the intention from the very beginning was for the birds to one day return to the wild—an impossibility for animals acclimated to humans. And so, puppets were made in the realistic likeness of adult condors, and used by members of the conservation team to feed and nurture the young birds, mitigating the risk of imprintation on the wrong species.

By 1992, the captive population had more than doubled, to 64 birds. That year, after an absence of five years, the first two captive-bred condors were released into their ancestral home. Many other releases followed, including the return of AC-9 himself in 2002. Thanks to the efforts of zoos and conservationists, as of 2024 there are 561 living California condors, over half of which fly free in the wilds of the American West.

The fight to save the California condor is far from over. The species is still listed as critically endangered. Lead poisoning (from ingesting shot/bullets from abandoned carcasses) remains the primary source of mortality for the species, with tagged birds tested and treated whenever possible. Baby condors are fed bone chips by their parents, likely as a calcium supplement—but, to a condor, bits of bone and bits of plastic can be indistinguishable, and dead nestlings have been found with stomachs full of trash.

There's hope, though. There are things we can change, things we can counteract and stop from happening in the future. It was a human hand that created this problem, and it will take a human hand to fix it. Hope is only gone when the last animal breathes its last breath—and the California condor is still here.

-

This painting is titled Puppet Rearing (California Condor), and is part of my series Conservation Pieces, which focuses on the efforts and techniques used to save critically endangered birds from extinction. It is traditional gouache, on 22x30" paper.

[coochiequeens]

Gay men and the wealthy are no longer content to exploit one woman now exploiting two at the same is becoming trendy

Why have one baby when you can have 2? People are paying $500,000 to hire 2 surrogates at once and have 'twiblings'

By Kelsey Vlamis  Jul 16, 2024, 3:04 PM EDT

Some people are hiring two surrogates at the same time to carry their babies.

Concurrent surrogacy can be complicated and costly, with prices reaching up to $500,000 or more.

Many people who do it are in their 40s and trying to build out their family quickly.

Bill Houghton still vividly remembers the moment he met his son.

He was sitting in the hospital waiting room, right outside the birthing room, when a nurse appeared carrying a little green bundle.

"I just held him in my arms and just started crying. It was so overwhelming. My husband was like, 'Oh my God, I can't believe that this is it. We're a family,'" Houghton told Business Insider. "This is my son."

Just one week later, Houghton and his husband would have the same experience all over again when their second child, another son, was delivered.

"And it has been like that ever since," he said. "To this day, I still look at them and I think, 'Oh my God, these are my sons.' My father had sons. I never thought that I would have a son."

Houghton and his husband opted to become parents via concurrent surrogacy — a process in which two surrogates are hired to carry two babies at the same, or overlapping, time.

The resulting children can be born anywhere from one week apart, like Houghton's, to nine months apart, and have been referred to by some people in the industry as "tandem siblings" or "twiblings."

Surrogacy agencies told BI that concurrent surrogacy journeys are not uncommon, with some saying it's a rising trend in a growing industry that was valued at $14 billion in 2022 by Global Market Insights and has attracted the investments of private equity firms.

All kinds of people — couples or singles, straight or gay, young or old — have opted to build out their family two at a time via concurrent surrogacy. But there is one thing that most parents of twiblings have in common: the ability to afford them.

While Houghton hired surrogates abroad, couples who choose to go through US-based agencies can easily spend $300,000 to half a million dollars or more on concurrent surrogates, according to five surrogacy agencies that spoke to BI.

"It is a luxury, absolutely," Brooke Kimbrough, cofounder and CEO of Roots Surrogacy, told BI. "Most American families don't have $200,000 in cash to go through surrogacy generally, and then $400,000-plus in cash to be able to go through that twice at the same time."

Still, the use of concurrent surrogates could grow as surrogacy generally grows in the US, in part because celebrities like Kim Kardashian and Chrissy Teigen have started opening up about using surrogates, as well as depictions in film and TV that have made the practice more mainstream. Teigen was even pregnant at the same time as her surrogate.

Surrogacy is also becoming increasingly relevant as more and more people are opting to have kids and start building their families later in life.

Chrissy Teigen and John Legend have opened up about using a surrogate. Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for Sports Illustrated Swimsuit

Concurrent surrogacy can help build a family quickly

Concurrent journeys typically look like regular surrogacy journeys, just times two. Gestational surrogacy, when IVF is used to place a fertilized embryo into a surrogate, is the most common form of surrogacy in the US today. Parents can use their own egg and sperm or that of donors.

Like many gay couples, Houghton and his husband each used their sperm for one of the babies, as well as the same egg donor, so their sons are technically half brothers.

While there has been increased awareness around what some call "social surrogacy" — using a surrogate when it's not medically or biologically necessary — the majority of people who conceive via surrogacy do so because they have to.

"Typically, when people come to us, they've been through a lot. This is not their plan A, it's often not plan B, maybe it's plan C," Kim Bergman, a psychologist and senior partner at Growing Generations, told BI. "They've had a lot of disappointment, and they've had a lot of trials and tribulations."

Many hopeful parents are in their 40s and are simply eager to build their families, the agencies said. A surrogacy journey can easily take one and a half to two years, so for intended parents who know they want multiple kids, concurrent surrogates can be appealing.

Certainly, some people who opt for concurrent surrogates do not fit the definition of medically necessary, at least according to the standards laid out by the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM).

Some people have mental health reasons or a fear of giving birth. Others are actors or brain surgeons who spend 12 hours a day on their feet and who can't get pregnant and continue to do their jobs. All the surrogacy agencies BI spoke with said it's essentially never the case that someone opts for surrogacy simply for vanity reasons.

David Sher, founder and CEO of Elite IVF, told BI they've helped coordinate surrogates for celebrities, politicians, and people in demanding careers like finance or tech. He said he currently has a client who serves on the cabinet of a Western country and is trying to have a baby via surrogate in part due to her demanding schedule.

Sher said he thinks concurrent surrogacy has long been an option for intended parents but that there does seem to be an uptick in people who are opting to do it.

Part of the reason for that could be because fewer and fewer agencies are willing to do double embryo transfers, which were previously more common and could result in a twin pregnancy. The ASRM recommends against them, as twin pregnancies come with heightened risks for both the surrogate and the babies. So concurrent surrogacy is a safer option for intended parents who want to have two kids at the same time or in close succession.

Costly and complicated

Though it's viewed as a safer option, concurrent surrogacy is controversial. The ASRM guidelines actually recommend against concurrent surrogacy, as well as against social, or not medically necessary, surrogacy. But all five surrogacy agencies that BI spoke to will facilitate concurrent surrogacies.

The agencies said they've seen many concurrent surrogacy journeys be successful and that a lot of care and prior planning goes into making them happen.

"It's not taken lightly," Bergman said, adding that concurrent journeys are rarely chosen by 30-year-olds who have plenty of time to build their families, though that does occasionally happen.

Surrogacy, in general, is expensive — commonly ranging from $150,000 to $250,000 for one child. The costs go toward surrogate compensation, agency fees, legal fees for contracts, and clinical bills.

The agencies BI spoke with said a concurrent surrogacy journey would essentially cost twice that. Meaning there's no two-for-one special.

But cost isn't the only factor to consider. Perhaps the primary drawback to pursuing concurrent surrogacy (that is, besides the high price tag) is the logistics of it.

All the agencies emphasized that concurrent surrogacy should only be pursued with full transparency and the fully informed consent of every person involved. That means matching intended parents to surrogates who are fully aware and OK with the fact that they will not be the only surrogate.

Gestational surrogacy, in which a fertilized embryo is implanted in a surrogate, is most common in the US. Jay L. Clendenin/for The Washington Post/Getty Images

There's also tons of planning and talking through hypotheticals. Are the surrogates based in the same area? Can the parents attend both births? Are we staggering expected delivery times enough? What's the plan if one surrogate gets pregnant on the first try but the other doesn't?

There's also a psychological aspect. Will both surrogates feel fully supported? How will one feel if she doesn't get pregnant right away and the other does?

"All of these conversations are front-loaded. Anytime in the conversation, the surrogate can say, 'I'm not comfortable doing this,'" Bergman said, adding that sometimes, after thinking through the logistics, some parents will change their minds and plan to space the deliveries out further than they initially wanted, like to six or nine months.

Most agencies recommended staggering the planned deliveries by at least three months. But at the end of the day, parents need to be ready for the timeline to not go exactly as planned.

Houghton and his husband had actually planned to have their babies six weeks apart, but when one of the babies was born five weeks premature, they ended up with birthdays one week apart.

Concurrent surrogacy may not be for everyone — even if you can afford it

Although the cost of concurrent surrogacy makes it prohibitive for most people, that could change in the future as more and more companies expand their fertility benefits.

There are also more nonprofits popping up that will provide grants or partial funds to people who want to build their families via surrogacy but may not have the means to.

Jarret Zafran, founder and executive director at Brownstone Surrogacy, told BI that it's not necessarily only the ultrawealthy who pursue concurrent surrogacy. He said he currently has clients who are lifelong educators on the older side who are getting ready to start the surrogacy process. They recently asked about what it would look like for them to do a concurrent journey.

"I guess it is still a luxury in the sense that most Americans would not even be in a financial position to afford it the first time," Zafran, who also had a child with his husband through surrogacy, said. "But for them, this is not a frivolous decision, and they're scraping together every single little penny that they have, all of their savings, their retirement funds, and I get it."

By using surrogates abroad over a decade ago, Houghton and his husband, who are based in Spain, spent much less on their concurrent surrogates than they would have in the US. But he's still not totally sure why they chose to do concurrent journeys rather than space the children out a bit more.

"We just liked the idea of having two kids that were about the same age that would sort of grow up together," he said, adding, "I didn't realize at the time the challenges that would come with having two kids."

In reality, he said having the two boys grow up so close together in age, not twins but in the same class in school, ended up leading to a lot of conflict and constant competition as they were growing up. He said it has gotten better now that the boys are facing their teen years and developing their own identities.

Still, if he could do it over again, he thinks he would stagger them more.

"They're unbelievable young men, and I'm so proud of everything about them," he said. "But having the two together has been a challenge."

Have a news tip or a story to share about concurrent surrogacy? Contact this reporter at kvlamis@businessinsider.com.

If a brain surgeon or politician can't do their job while pregnant have they thought about how kids in general will impact their job? What if their kid wakes them up the night before surgery because they got of had a nightmare? Are they counting on a reliable spouse or a nanny to take care to the unpleasant parts of parenting.

Finally at the very end of the article they address how being born so close together impacts kids. We're they really surprised that there was a lot of competition? And they article just touched on how one of the twins was born 5 weeks premature. That means at one week old the dudes in charge of its care were focused on its twibling. Considering that surrogacy pregnancies are more likely to have complications do the parents consider how they will care for one baby while another baby is in the hospital longer than expected?

[iceyrukia]

Feminism aside, I think it’s bonkers the fact that we have lived in a patriarchal society is just completely overlooked in historical contexts and discussions about how certain ideologies/thoughts changed and formed the world. Like the fact that men have exploited women for their reproductive capacity and the way this has formed so much of society and culture for millennia and yet it’s not extensively talked about, and is sidelined as unimportant is wild. It’s all in the fact that men think patriarchy is natural and not an ideology so they are blind to it.

[mxmorbidmidnight]

In paganism there seems to be an ongoing issue with people not acknowledging its many issues. Pagans will often claim to be the “accepting” religion, with an absence of sexism, racism, homophobia, etc. It does appear that way when you first enter it. This is a lie.

No religion is immune to bigotry, brainwashing, abuse and exploitation. Pagan communities can be breeding grounds for abuse just as churches.

White supremacy is rampant, as is cultural appropriation. Women are treated as reproductive objects while in other more modern spiritual circles exists misandry. All religions are capable of harm. Do not be arrogant enough to think ours is an exception.