Two blokes having a chat about the commodification of women’s bodies: what could possibly go wrong? Well, a fair bit went wrong on 13 May for James O’Loghlin, host of Afternoons on ABC Sydney local radio, as he wrangled his lunchtime guest, one Simon Abrahams, a gay bloke who’d just had an opinion piece published in the Sydney Morning Herald in which he joyfully recounted his and his partner’s recent experience of obtaining a baby girl via commercial surrogacy in the USA.
Commercial surrogacy is illegal in Australia, though altruistic surrogacy is not. The topic of the interview, as O’Loghlin laid it out, was to be ‘Do surrogacy laws need to change?’ A weighty and controversial and sensitive topic. However his greeting of Abrahams suggested that what O’Loghlin had in mind was more of a puff piece. He ecstatically introduced Abrahams as though the bloke were just back from accomplishing some remarkable and admirable feat, such as trekking to the South Pole, rather than engaging in a practice which would have been illegal if he’d done it in Australia. O’Loghlin congratulated him, and then asked him to ‘talk us through’ how it had all happened, cooing ‘That’s lovely’ when Abrahams related how he and his partner had arrived in Reno, Nevada, just 24 hours before the baby’s birth (‘She held on for us to make it’).
After a bit more of such stuff, O’Loghlin asked Abrahams why he thought commercial surrogacy arrangements were banned in Australia. Abrahams didn’t even attempt to answer the question (surprise, surprise), and O’Loghlin obligingly let him get away with it. (Oh, come on, James! Do you ask a coal lobbyist to outline the advantages of renewables? Do you invite an AFL fan to sing the praises of rugby?)
O’Loghlin did get a little disputatious when Abrahams claimed that the potential surrogacy candidates he’d interviewed were ‘not in it for the money; they were doing it because they wanted to help us have a baby’; but in general the chat just proceeded affably onwards till O’Loghlin, a bit over seven minutes into the interview, decided to do a reset for the segment:
O’Loghlin: Simon Abrahams has just had a child by a surrogate – surrogate – Is – What is the correct term? Is the correct term ‘mother’? Or not?
Abrahams: No. The correct term is not ‘mother’.
O’Loghlin: Sorry!
Abrahams: But, you know, ‘surrogate’ or ‘carrier’.
O’Loghlin: ‘Carrier’; sorry. My apologies.
Unbeknownst to either of these blokes, Professor Karleen Gribble had just got into her car and switched on the ignition. Which turned on her car radio, which was tuned to the ABC (where else?). Now Professor Gribble happens to know something about the language of surrogacy. Last July, she presented a submission to the Australian Law Reform Commission’s inquiry into surrogacy, and right at the time of the broadcast she was proofing an academic article on the same topic.
As part of O’Loghlin’s reset, he invited listeners to contact the station ‘if you’ve got thoughts or an experience’, so Professor Gribble did just that. She didn’t get on immediately. Meanwhile Abrahams revealed himself to be a male chauvinist of the first water, and the hapless O’Loghlin did nothing to stop him.
For example, in answer to O’Loghlin’s question as to what, in Abrahams’ opinion, might be some appropriate ways of regulating commercial surrogacy arrangements in Australia, Abrahams – after ‘correcting’ O’Loghlin’s use of language (‘The term I prefer is “compensated surrogacy” ’) – managed to name just one: putting in place a cap on how much someone ‘might be paid, or compensated, for, you know, all their work as the surrogate’.
Good one, Mr Abrahams: obviously, the main issue around surrogacy is all these selfish greedy carriers just itching for a chance to rip off us poor unfortunate human beings.
Oh, and then: when, after a bit more prompting, Abrahams did manage to think of another appropriate way to regulate surrogacy, it turned out to be how they do things in Nevada, where: ‘they issue a birth certificate that just has my partner and my name on it, identifying straight away that we are the parents of this child. In Australia, or certainly in Victoria, and I imagine it’s the same in New South Wales, a birth certificate would be issued in the name of the person who gave birth to the child, even though that embryo, which is probably made with an egg donor, and, you know, has no genetic relationship to that person at all, they’re not the mother of that child.’
Nailed it again, Mr Abrahams! Wipe women out of the equation altogether!
It was right at that point that Professor Gribble was put to air. And this is what she said:
Yes, I just popped in the car and heard the question about, you know, is the woman who gestates and births the baby the mother. And he said, ‘No, that’s not the case at all’. That’s really [sigh] a critical issue in surrogacy. Looking at it from a child’s point of view: So, for a baby, the woman who gestates and births them, they, at birth, recognise that woman as their mother. There’s genetics shared between the woman who gestates and births the baby and the foetus. It’s really – this whole discussion that we’re having at the moment around the Australian Law Reform Commission enquiry: It’s been really driven by people who want children and by people who profit from surrogacy. And there has not been enough focus on the rights of those who are born by surrogacy. We have – we’re not learning from what we learnt in the past around adoption and around donor conception –
O’Loghlin chopped her right off:
Okay. Look, thank you very much for your point of view. Very much appreciated. [Clears throat] Someone has texted in …
He didn’t ask Abrahams to comment on what he’d heard, and Abrahams didn’t volunteer a response either.
It’s a pity O’Loghlin didn’t let the conversation develop, because plenty of the things Professor Gribble has to say would likely be of value to Abrahams and his partner as they embark on their parenting journey. For example, in her academic paper she notes that existing evidence suggests people born via surrogacy may often view – and refer to – the woman who gestated and gave birth to them as a mother, and that relationship denial on the part of the caregiving parents, either overt or through language choice, ‘risks inappropriately burdening children with parental insecurity and may present a barrier to identity development’. She concludes that it is beneficial for children for the language of surrogacy to recognise ‘the multiplicity of their mothers’.
Drawing on insights from adoption, she also notes that it is beneficial for there to be communication between caregiving parents and children that not only includes honest information-sharing but also provides space for children to express their feelings and for parents to be empathic and sensitive. She argues persuasively that in order to do this, parents need to respect in language the maternal nature of the relationship between the child and the woman who gestated and birthed him/her, and if relevant, the woman who provided the oocyte for his/her conception.
We’ve had occasion before to draw attention to the ABC treating what, for women, is a serious issue as if it were the raw material for a puff piece. We’ve also called the ABC out for tiptoeing round the word ‘Woman’. The 13 May edition of Afternoons shows that the ABC’s dismissiveness of female perspectives and language goes beyond just its zealous adherence to gender identitariansim. It’s outrageous that the ABC embarked on this broadcast without securing the presence for it of an articulate spokesperson to put the case against commercial surrogacy and/or surrogacy in general. It wouldn’t have been that hard: no fewer than 12 feminist organisations got together last year to make a submission to the Australian Law Reform Commission arguing that ‘all forms of surrogacy constitute sex-based violence against women and girls and perpetuate systemic exploitation’.
And it’s outrageous that O’Loghlin treated Abrahams – a beneficiary of commercial surrogacy, which is illegal in Australia – as an expert on the appropriate language to be employed in the discussion. Outrageous, too, that Professor Gribble was treated as if she were a cold blast of midnight upon a jolly afternoon tea party, Maleficent arriving at the christening of Princess Aurora.
And it’s super, super outrageous that O’Loghlin apologised – twice! – for speaking the word ‘mother’.
If ABC journos don’t lift their game on issues like surrogacy and gender identitarianism, they’re going to be continuously at risk of making such blunders. And prompting enraged listeners to take them to task about it.