Recently, a piece of news detonated the whole network.
A biological company in Qingdao was exposed to a surrogacy laboratory.
The details are staggering.
750,000 are guaranteed to be raw, and 950,000 are optional genders.
There are seventeen or eighteen young girls who sell their eggs, and this includes minors.
Illegal surgeries such as egg retrieval and transplantation are carried out by doctors from tertiary hospitals and novices who have only studied for one month.
Surrogacy has been criticized for so many years, and it has long been a matter of everyone's shouting.
Especially after a certain Shuang was banned, many domestic entertainment actresses also collapsed one after another.
But in reality, this phenomenon is still so common, and the market demand is still so large.
Why is that?
A shocking old movie has long uncovered the truth for us -
"Mother of a Slave"
This film is based on the novel of the same name by Roushi.
The original work is a modern literary classic strongly recommended by Lu Xun.
The film lineup is also very strong, starring Liu Zifeng and He Lin.
He Lin also won an Emmy Award for actress, and she is also the first Asian actress to win this award.
The movie tells the story of a pawn wife during the Republic of China.
Pawn wife is a special marriage custom in the old society, which refers to the husband lending his legal wife to give away the right to sex and childbirth in exchange for material remuneration.
It sounds like a long time ago, but in essence, it wasn't much different from today's surrogacy.
The heroine Ah Xiu (played by He Lin) is poor and in debt.
The husband was also seriously ill and had no money for medical treatment.
In order to prevent the family from starving to death and dying of illness, Ah Xiu was forced to abandon his son Chunbao and was pawned to the Li family, a wealthy family.
The Li family is well-off.
Mr. Li is a showman, in his 50s, and he has not been able to give birth to children due to his wife's illness.
For this reason, Mr. Li signed a contract with Ah Xiu's husband and gave him 80 yuan to support the family and pay off the debt.
As a condition, Ah Xiu wanted to stay in the Li family and give birth to a son for Master Li for three years.
To put it bluntly, it is to sell the womb.
One can imagine how painful and helpless Ah Xiu is.
While shouldering the heavy responsibility of inheriting the lineage, it is good to be taken care of in terms of life.
Until the birth of the child, the dirty work was done by the maids, and she enjoyed fine clothes and food.
This is a life that she has never imagined as she is used to living a poor life.
In the eyes of others, everything is going well.
Master Li is a scholar, although he has bad intentions, he is still polite and courteous on the surface, and the bed linen is also gradual, which does not make Ah Xiu too disgusted.
It didn't take long for Ah Xiu to give birth to a boy named Qiu Bao.
Only wait until the child is born, and she can go home to reunite with her husband and son.
The remuneration given by the Li family is enough for their whole family to have food and clothing for many years.
The old servants of the Li family were envious and said, "If it were me, I would give birth to ten or eight ......."
But it turned out that the old maid's idea was too naïve.
Later developments are heartbreaking.
Before Qiu Bao was weaned, Ah Xiu learned in despair -
The money she earned from selling her body has long been squandered by her husband.
His son Chunbao is sick and has no money to seek medical treatment.
Ah Xiu sent people under the fence, naturally there was no money.
And she suddenly thought that Master Li had just given her a valuable heirloom bracelet.
Ah Xiu originally planned to secretly give the bracelet to her husband for money.
Unexpectedly, he was discovered by Mrs. Li and swept out of the house.
She was forced to leave her son Qiubao early and was no longer allowed to enter the gate of the Li family.
What made Ah Xiu even more painful was that when she returned home, Chun Bao looked at her like a stranger.
After being absent for three years and being harassed by neighbors, his feelings for his mother have long deteriorated.
In the end, Ah Xiu gave birth to two children for two families, but she was completely deprived of her motherhood, and she couldn't hold a single flesh and blood into her arms.
Today, why are so many people against surrogacy?
In addition to legal restrictions and physiological health risks.
In the film, Ah Xiu's fate gives the answer.
First, there is a crisis of motherhood's identity.
In the film, Ah Xiu, as a "surrogate" mother who had to hand over her child to the client, experienced a deep emotional tear -
As a mother, she has a natural maternal love for her children, Qiu Bao and Chun Bao;
But on the other hand, she was forced to give up this mother-son relationship and become an "invisible mother".
Mrs. Li, as the mother of the client, was also in deep pain.
Despite the contract, she is Qiu Bao's rightful mother.
But she has never been able to shake off the fact that she is not her biological mother.
When she saw Master Li buying fruit for Ah Xiu during pregnancy, she would be jealous and blame herself for not being capable.
The existence of this dual mother role creates a complex emotional conflict that plunges both into deep pain.
At the climax of the film, Ah Xiu can't accept the separation from his own flesh and blood and tries to recapture Qiu Bao.
Mrs. Li seems to have taken the child brutally, but her pain will not disappear with Ah Xiu's departure.
The confrontation between them is not only a struggle for custody of the child, but also a recognition of the mother's identity.
Second, the issue of exploitation.
The film depicts Axiu's family background, and financial difficulties forced her to become a surrogate mother, which is also a true portrayal of many surrogate mothers in reality.
Becoming a pawn wife has never been Ah Xiu's choice.
Faced with the unsolvable pressure of life, Ah Xiu has long been deprived of the right to choose.
From the moment she decided to rent her body, the last bit of fertility value left as a woman was squeezed out by the wealthy, and her dignity and self-worth were also exploited.
And because of her weakness, this economic deal was also unfair from the start.
The third is children's mental health problems.
Since his mother left, Chun Bao has endured a terrible father while being ridiculed and ostracized by his peers, and his unrelieved emotional repression makes it difficult for him to rely on his mother anymore.
If Ah Xiu's second child, Qiu Bao, also learns the truth in the future, he will inevitably encounter similar psychological difficulties.
An identity crisis may not only lead to alienation from the parent-child relationship, but also lead to self-denial and social adjustment disorders in the process of growing up.
Many people may feel that the pawn wife system in the old society is still too different from the current surrogacy phenomenon.
In the film, Ah Xiu's tragedy mainly comes from the oppression of feudal society.
Women do not have the right to reproduce independently, they are persecuted too deeply by male power, and their social status is extremely low.
Ah Xiu gave birth to a daughter when she was young.
As a result, the daughter was drowned in the water as soon as she was born.
In contrast, women now have more autonomy in their decisions and are no longer bought and sold as they were in the old society.
In some countries, surrogacy is legal with certain restrictions.
Well-developed medical support, effective legal regulation and regulation seem to be able to reduce the physiological risks and exploitation of surrogate mothers to some extent.
And it is true that many surrogates are willing to sign up and are happy to receive financial compensation while helping infertile families.
is like the heroine in the Japanese drama "The Swallow Will Not Return", after careful consideration, she decided to rely on surrogacy in exchange for better living conditions.
But, is it really possible for surrogacy to be the best of both worlds in this case?
The domestic film "Mother Tongue", adapted from real events, gave a negative answer.
This movie is about a "near-perfect" surrogacy story.
Both surrogates take what they need and can agree from start to finish.
The process is safe and healthy, everyone is kind and considerate of others.
Surrogacy is also successful, both parties are happy with the results, and on the surface there is no apparent exploitation where there is.
But at the end, the family is broken, sliding into a tragedy similar to "The Mother of a Slave".
The surrogate mother left her biological daughter behind.
The entrusting mother also chose to leave home because she could not let go of the fact that she was not the child's biological mother, so it was difficult to connect emotionally with the child.
The reason is that once it comes to childbearing, it can't be a simple transaction.
Because today, childbearing is still not a matter of personal choice, but a reflection of the structural problems of patriarchal society.
When it is used as a tool of trade, inequalities in gender and class are hidden.
For example, the idea of succession has an invisible control over the female body, and the traditional expectation that motherhood comes with it.
This has become the invisible driving force behind the choice of surrogacy.
The pawn wife of the old society was a cannibal under the feudal patriarchy.
The modern surrogacy industry is cannibalism under capitalism.
Luo Xiang often said that people are the goal, not the tool.
Once a person's body or life is commodified and objectified, it will bring about a series of complex social, ethical and legal issues, including the above-mentioned problems, affecting the ethical concepts and social structure of the surrogate, the child, and even the entire society.
Therefore, surrogacy is not a new technical problem that has only emerged in modern society, and it has carried too many traditional chronic diseases once it has come out.
For example, the concept of preference for sons, the belief that the value of women is the continuation of the family bloodline, the concept of the female body as a reproductive tool, and the concept that blood relations are the maintenance of family stability and integrity, etc.
Too many outdated concepts like these have been written into the cultural genes and collective unconscious, and it is difficult to be recognized, so that in modern society, they will make a comeback again and again in the unbridled consumer society in the face of women's independence and freedom of choice.
This is also the reason why surrogacy has been repeatedly banned.
Society is no longer the old society, but the concept is still the same old concept.
A woman who, in the name of surrogacy, voluntarily becomes an exploiter or an exploited person.
She is still a slave mother.