#romani women and surrogacy

[djuvlipen]

A few days ago, the Greek police dismantled a human trafficking network that was exploiting women, calling it "altruistic surrogacy." The victims were mainly Romani women from Bulgaria and Romania (source).

[djuvlipen]

every once in a while i get a message like "wow i can't believe you enjoy [media with a man in it]. so much for feminism. 🙄🙄 get blocked you mra" and it's like man i wrote a whole master's degree dissertation on the struggles romani women faced during wwii. i write academic articles and i attend academic conferences to talk about this. i've been volunteering in a romani rights organization that focuses on securing romani girls' access to education once a week every week for the past two years. i give yearly to a radical feminist organization in my country. i attend female-only radfem and lesbian radfem events about once a month. atp my entire life revolves around activism because i'm also in charge of a (left-wing) political party's youth section in my city where, guess what, i've been mostly doing stuff to support women too. like recently i drafted a whole paper for the upcoming congress to push people to support abolishing surrogacy and i've been trying to organize a conference about abolishing prostitution with radfem abolition groups and just yesterday i was editing a political training on feminism to remove the tra stuff. and on top of that i've been supporting the bds movement and trying my hardest for the past few years to get my carbon footprint to the lowest it can be and to stick as much as i can to a vegan diet (which is not always that easy considering i'm always broke as fuck and i've had to rely on food donations where i can't really decide what goes in the bucket). i don't really talk about that stuff because i don't want to sound like i have a "holier than thou" mentality and because i don't want to be serious all the time but also what more do you guys fucking want from me. and like i'm sorry that i like the wonka movie so much but also what have you been doing for womens rights. anyway

[djuvlipen]

Is there a reason on why Romanians do nothing but deny the human trafficking rates of Romani woman and children in there country like I just got into an argument with one about it

I assume it's because they feel it's taking the focus away from the white Romanian women targeted by it. Human trafficking disproportionately harms white Romanian women, and Romanian Romani women even more, and because they relate to white Romanian women but don't think Romani women are also just as deserving of help, they deny it. I get so angry whenever I see people talk of the human and sex trafficking in Eastern Europe and they treat it like all those women are white when Romani women sometimes make up the majority of victims. Like for the surrogacy clinic in Greece, I saw an Instagram post that was going around saying, 'I know you guys don't think this has to do with racism because the victims are white women, but they are Eastern Europeans carrying the babies of rich, white, Western Europeans' and I get the sentiment, except that... the victims were primarily Romani women. And it's racist because Romani women have been treated like Europeans' personal breeding mares (literally that was one of the things they went through during slavery in Romani) for centuries

[djuvlipen]

Have you noticed how none of the big Romani newspapers and organizations have talked about the recent cases of racialized misogyny against Romani women? The ERRC, Romea and Radio Romano didn't release even one article about the murder of Hyara Flor, the murder of Luljeta Prezi, or about the recent surrogacy clinic that had been trafficking Romani women in Greece. They never talk about prostitution and the sex trade either despite how Romani women are impacted by it. The big Romani social media activists never talk about that too. The only time Romani women's issues are talked about is when talking about forced sterilization in the Czech Republic. Why is that? It's like the only time they care about Romani women is when we are prevented from having their children. They don't care about us otherwise

[djuvlipen]

"1.

The latest studies draw our attention to the economic and racial inequalities that underpin the surrogacy industry. Both heterosexual and homosexual couples who use surrogacy are predominantly upper-class. Conversely, it is poverty that drives women to become surrogates. The war in Ukraine, the caste system in India, and social deprivation in the United States have all been linked to the influx of women into the surrogacy market.

Surrogacy reproduces and exacerbates the inequalities between the global North and the global South. The most popular destinations for Western couples seeking surrogacy are Ukraine, Mexico, Colombia, the Philippines, and India. Surrogacy should be seen as a form of sex tourism that reinforces imperialist and neo-colonial logics: half of the children born to surrogate mothers in India in 2012 were destined to be adopted by white, Western couples, and in Ukraine, in 2020, the majority of clients of surrogacy clinics were couples from Western countries.

Finally, the surrogacy industry is based on human trafficking networks whose first victims are, once again, poor women from non-Western countries. In Western Europe, Indian, Mexican, and Eastern European women are transported to clinics to give birth to babies who are then entrusted to rich, white, Western families. This problem regards both commercial surrogacy and so-called “altruistic” surrogacy, which concerns women who choose to carry a child for a couple without financial compensation. Last year in Crete, the Greek police dismantled a human trafficking network that exploited women in “altruistic” surrogacy clinics. The victims of this network were mainly Romani women from Bulgaria and Romania.

2.

Surrogacy is not simply a matter of personal choice: it is a very lucrative industry, worth $12.8 billion as of 2022, run by companies and private clinics that reduce children to commodities to be exchanged and transform women’s bodies into objects to be rented.

Surrogacy dispossesses women of their bodily autonomy by introducing contracts that impose intrusive and frequent medical examinations and that regulate, over nine months, their diet and sexual behavior. These contracts authorize the couple to order the abortion of the fetus, but prohibit the surrogate mother from having an abortion if she wishes to. Finally, these contracts do not take into account the physical and psychological risks that pregnancy can have on women's bodies: fatigue, gestational diabetes, pre-eclampsia, risks of miscarriage and complications during pregnancy and childbirth, sterility, postpartum psychosis and depression.

The treatment of surrogate mothers in clinics is itself a vector of violence. In the United States, surrogate mothers earn only $1.50/hour, and in India, they earn half as much. The artificial insemination process is also very restrictive and intrusive. To maximize the chances of conception, surrogate mothers receive two to three hormone injections per day over a period of three to four months. Surrogate mothers receive no financial compensation in the event of miscarriages and, when the child is born, it is immediately taken away from them and given to the client couple. In most cases, surrogate mothers do not have the right to meet or see the child under penalty of legal prosecution.

3.

In view of these different elements, it seems necessary for our movement to oppose any position favorable to surrogacy. In particular, we must reject neo-liberal talking points that claim that surrogacy would constitute progress for LGBT rights. In reality, surrogacy reminds us that male supremacy knows no sexual orientation. A contract that markets pregnancy and motherhood would only reduce women's bodies into commodities. Our movement must affirm an abolitionist and combative position against surrogacy. We must train our activists on the issue of surrogacy if we want to fight effectively against the commodification of women's bodies, against sexual, economic and racial inequalities, for an egalitarian and emancipatory society for all."

trying to wrap up chapter 3 of my hp fanfiction.. then i'll have to write a submission on surrogacy for the upcoming national congress of my political party. maybe i'll write one too about the rural working class if i have time..

[djuvlipen]

This is not the first time we hear about Romani women being exploited by surrogacy.

It's been reported that Eastern European Romani women had been transported to France to be exploited by the surrogacy market.

In 2019, Romani women, as well as Bulgarian and Georgian women, were taken to private clinics in Greece to give birth before their babies were sold for illegal adoption. Others were taken to private clinics to have their eggs harvested and some were used as ‘surrogate mothers’. The same group was also involved in trafficking young women of Bulgarian, Georgian and Roma origin for the extraction of oocytes.

A few days ago, the Greek police dismantled a human trafficking network that was exploiting women, calling it "altruistic surrogacy." The victims were mainly Romani women from Bulgaria and Romania (source).