Cristiano Ronaldo: A Woman Is Not A Factory

Stop Surrogacy Now 27 September 2017
Family First Comment: When Cristiano Ronaldo confirmed through his Instagram account that he had been the father of twins, he received more than 8 million “likes,” and 290,300 articles were published on the subject worldwide, 71,000 of them containing the phrase “very happy.” There was only one thing that did not appear anywhere: the mother’s name. Who? How was your pregnancy and how do you feel after birth? How many times a day do you think about your children you will never see again? Ronaldo does not mention it, and the only thing that is known about her is that she is American and that she received €200,000 for the babies. In the debate on surrogacy this is typical. In the media there is talk of surrogacy as a way to have children, not a way to lose them, despite the fact that this is what separates surrogacy from any other way of reproducing……
No one seems to raise their voice to say the obvious: this is a blatant crime against the rights of women and children. According to Article 7 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, each child has the right to his or her parents. Surrogate motherhood, whether paid or altruistic, violates this fundamental right. In surrogacy, children lose their mothers, and mothers lose their children. It is not to add, it is to remove.
When Cristiano Ronaldo confirmed through his Instagram account that he had been the father of twins, he received more than 8 million “likes,” and 290,300 articles were published on the subject worldwide, 71,000 of them containing the phrase “very happy.” There was only one thing that did not appear anywhere: the mother’s name. Who? How was your pregnancy and how do you feel after birth? How many times a day do you think about your children you will never see again? Ronaldo does not mention it, and the only thing that is known about her is that she is American and that she received €200,000 for the babies.
In the debate on surrogacy this is typical. In the media there is talk of surrogacy as a way to have children, not a way to lose them, despite the fact that this is what separates surrogacy from any other way of reproducing.
The media perspective is generally that of the buyers—their feelings, their desires (often called “needs”) abound. Mothers remain anonymous, as if they were workers in a baby factory. Sometimes they remain so anonymous that children do not even know who they are. Like the previous son of Ronaldo. His sister confesses in an interview that her origins have been hidden: “We say that his mother is traveling. He does not ask for more. We told him once that she was in heaven.”
No one seems to raise their voice to say the obvious: this is a blatant crime against the rights of women and children. According to Article 7 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, each child has the right to his or her parents. Surrogate motherhood, whether paid or altruistic, violates this fundamental right. In surrogacy, children lose their mothers, and mothers lose their children. It is not to add, it is to remove. And, as this is an industry (do not be fooled by the romantic poems of generous women who do it for free—altruistic surrogacy does not account for even 2% of cases) the reasons are economic. Let me be perfectly clear: surrogacy is the sale of babies. The rich buy, the poor sell. There is nothing progressive or postmodern about this practice: it is the same old exploitation of women and the poor.
I have been studying what I prefer to call renting wombs since 2006. I have seen this industry grow, and scandals are becoming more frequent every day. Like the Japanese billionaire who got 16 children from different Thai clinics—he wanted to get 100. What would a bachelor with 100 babies do? Who knows. Or like the Spanish couple who got so angry when their twins were not of both sexes that they refused to pay the surrogate mother’s hospital bills. The surrogate, Kelly Martinez, says, “They had paid extra to have both a boy and a girl and they were really upset.” They stressed Martinez so much that she developed preeclampsia, which can be deadly. I cannot help thinking that this couple acted more like disappointed customers than parents. Or when Asian mafias discovered this lucrative industry in 2010, and began to use the same strategies as in prostitution: abducting young girls, locking them up, and using their bodies. How many European couples have had children from clinics in Cambodia or Thailand that were actually prisons?
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