HARROWING personal testimony from survivors of prostitution and surrogacy underpinned a significant conference held in London earlier this month.

Its overwhelming message was unassailable — that capitalism has won a grim monopoly on women’s bodies, and shows no evidence of destroying itself. Quite the opposite, these pernicious industries are destroying lives and preying on the vulnerable, while rewarding the moneygrubbing and selfish.

For the British grassroots women’s group Nordic Model Now!, this was the latest in a series of highly successful events, aimed at the abolition of prostitution and related practices such as lapdancing, pornography and surrogacy.

Under the banner “Women for sale: Private matter or public crisis?” the conference was subtitled, “Selling our bodies. At what cost?” drawing parallels between the lucrative business models involved in both prostitution and surrogacy.

Speaker after speaker lifted the veil of fairytale falsehoods, that “sex work” is a normal occupation, and that surrogacy is based on a universal “right to parenthood.” The harsh realities were delivered in survivors’ calm voices, though the years of pain, betrayal and injustice were only a breath away. 

Olivia Maurel told the audience: “I hate my birthday — the day I lost my mother forever.”

Born through surrogacy, she is now a leading advocate for its abolition. As spokeswoman for the Casablanca Declaration, she takes up its call on politicians and policy-makers to end the practice. In September this year, her moving testimony led eight MPs, from separate parties in Chile, to issue a strongly worded statement. It said: “Altruistic surrogacy has become a disguise for this enslaving market. Just look at the clinics that operate behind it and that profit from this tragedy in the same way, with no regard, once again, for either the mother or the child.

“Chile was a pioneer in the abolition of slavery, let us hope that it does not lag behind in this struggle.”

Maurel said: “I’ve always felt inside of me that something was wrong. At 17, I was having a huge identity crisis. I didn’t know who I was. I didn’t know where I was going with my life. I was ordered, I was fabricated, I was custom-made, I was sold, I was bought, and the idea of being treated as an object slowly distorted me throughout my entire life.”

She suffered from depression, made several suicide attempts, and found friendships impossible, fearing that she would be abandoned.

“The mother-child attachment has been proven over and over again, so why would this bond miraculously disappear in surrogacy? Why are we inflicting this primal wound on purpose on surrogate-born children? Why do we not separate puppies from their mothers for two months? Because it’s animal abuse if we do so, but we do it to baby humans.”

Now 32, Maurel took a DNA test when she was 30, and found her biological family, including her birth mother.

Now a mother of three herself, she said: “Women and children pay way too much of a price for commissioning parents’ desires to have a newborn baby.

“There is no international law that provides the right to have a child, but women’s rights and children’s rights are protected by international laws.

“There is no way of ethically selling babies. Just like there’s no ethical way of selling organs, just like there’s no ethical way of buying a woman to have sex with her, just like there’s no ethical way to regulate slavery.”

Maurel is clearly dedicated to her mission, but the pain inflicted by surrogacy still weighs heavily: “All this has cost me a lot, especially my relationship with my parents. They have decided to cut me out of their lives. I’m not fighting against them; I don’t hate them — I love them.”

Also calling for an end to the surrogacy industry was Gary Powell, long-term gay rights activist. Speaking here in a personal capacity, Powell is also the Research Fellow for Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity at the Bow Group think tank. His work focuses on exposing the harms of gender ideology and on campaigning for the complete abolition of surrogacy for all people, regardless of sexual orientation.

He said that surrogacy was “a form of reckless commercialism,” and challenged “the burgeoning view that surrogacy should be accepted, promoted and even paid for by the state because it’s supposedly a gay right or an LGBT+ right.

“For me, campaigning for gay rights means setting objectives that are fair and reasonable, and that do not harm the rights of other minority groups or of the wider society of which we’re a part.

“Campaigning for gay rights also means calling out bad and harmful practices in the very abstract gay community and the gay rights movement. We do not build a good, supportive and nurturing gay community by turning a blind eye to harmful things that are happening in our own spaces and culture.”

Powell stressed: “I support the right of appropriately vetted gay and lesbian people to adopt or foster children.”

He believed that surrogacy was wrong across the board, regardless of sexual orientation, and claimed the practice had “hijacked the gay rights movement as a means of marketing this lucrative form of human exploitation. Surrogacy is being legitimised in the name of gay rights with the justification that it provides gay men with their own biological children.

“A big new market for surrogacy is also being created by the transgender movement, given that puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and gender surgeries will often result in the sterilisation of the individual undergoing them. Surrogacy is then regarded as a solution.”

This was another income stream for what he termed Big Fertility, “and very shrewd marketing, given how unpopular it is these days to suggest anything that might be perceived as disadvantaging the gay or trans constituency. 

“It cannot be a gay right or an LGBT+ right to have children via surrogacy. There is no universal human right to be a parent.”

The conference also heard the testimony from Marie-Anne Isabelle, who had become an “altruistic surrogate” for a family member.

She had relied on trust, she said, when she insisted she would have some contact with the child she gave birth to. This was ultimately denied to her, despite lengthy court proceedings.

“They truly felt they owned me, and that I was their property.”

This was a sentiment that emerged continually during the day.

Valerie Tender, a sex trade survivor, pointed to the continuum — prostitution, porn and surrogacy all depended on the commodification of women, and their exploitation.

“All these practices call for women to be dissociated from themselves. When I was in the sex trade I would have said sex work is work, because we need to tell ourselves a lot of things in order to do it. There’s a lot of things you need to tell yourself to pull through and to survive, and something that I see among all women who claim to be sex workers is they just can’t stand the thought of seeing themselves as victims.”

The battle to end the commodification of women is a tough one. It may be endless. It requires all decent people to decide which side you’re on.

To give the late Desmond Tutu’s quote, which we know well, its full text: “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse, and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.”

In the struggle against prostitution, porn and surrogacy, any insouciance on your part betrays women and girls. They will not thank you for it.

All presentations from the event are on the Nordic Model Now! YouTube channel tinyurl.com/NMNChannel.