Letters to the Editor
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NO. NO. NO. And again, NO.
Surrogacy within a family distorts boundaries in ways that even the healthiest, most well-balanced families would have a hard time with. Regardless of any compulsion the letter writer feels, she needs to spend some time meditating on her existing obligations -- to her husband, of course, but even more to her three existing children. Those obligations supercede any heroic desire she may have to help her sister out.
To start with, pregnancy isn't a benign process. A mother of three should think twice about elective surgery, bungee jumping, or anything else that's going to put her and her family at risk. What if the pregnancy lands her on bed rest? What if she has high blood pressure, gestational diabetes, or -- God forbid -- preeclampsia or a stroke? These are all common complications in pregnant women above the age of 35. It's one thing to undertake those risks with the support of one's husband, in the name of building your own family. It's quite another to expose yourself to them because you want to be a hero.
The letter writer may think she'll have no trouble relinquishing the child she's carried for nine months to her sister, but how will her children feel? Pregnancy involves everyone in a family, not just the woman carrying the child. Her husband will feel the baby move at night, in bed, and get used to the idea of the new child developing, whether he wants her to be pregnant or not. Her children will have to answer their friends' questions about the new sibling they won't be getting. How does an eight-year-old explain surrogacy to other eight-year-olds? Why force your children to deal with these things if they don't have to?
The obsession with having children you're biologically related to is ignorant at best and narcissistic at worst. The letter writer should know, as a married woman, that she created a new family when she married her husband. Her husband, not her sister, is her next of kin. In the same way, an adopted child is every bit as much a family member as a child born through surrogacy. The letter writer should encourage her sister to adopt instead of indulging her own fantasies of heroism and her sister's misguided belief in the importance of biological relation.