Today, surrogacy is a procedure that involves the work of a huge number of medical professionals and the insemination for it is done in artificial conditions. However, there were times when a peculiar form of surrogacy was used back in ancient times in order to defeat the problem of infertility, which has apparently haunted mankind since the beginning of time.
Naturally, in ancient times there was no question of laboratory conditions, serious scientists and so on. However, there was a problem of infertility, and it was particularly acute for noblemen who were to pass on all their possessions and their high status in society to their heirs. In those cases, where there was no such heir, the so-called traditional surrogacy was used. This rather mild term was used when a husband of an infertile woman had an intercourse with another woman in order to conceive a child and then give it to the father. The real mother of the child is the man’s wife, who is incapable of having children herself.
Even though it was a purely barbaric custom, it allows us to understand how acute the problem of infertility was even for the people of antiquity. The role of a traditional surrogate mother was mainly performed by a slave or a concubine: she would unconditionally give her own baby to another woman, who would henceforth be regarded as its real mother.
In Sumer, for example, the process of giving the baby to another woman for rearing was even stipulated by the legislative documents of that time. This means that infertility among the nobility was quite a serious problem, and the ancient people found a way to solve this problem as best they could.
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In Ancient Egypt, according to the extant historical documents, the use of such surrogate mothers was common for aristocrats. It was not considered wrong or shameful because procreation was one of the most important aspects of life for noblemen.
As you can see, surrogacy has a very long history. It has come a long way before modern scientists found a way to allow infertile people to have genetically related children. Of course, today, no one is forcing women to give up their own child anymore. Science is on the side of reproduction and, thanks to surrogate mothers, millions of infertile couples worldwide now have the happy opportunity to hold a genetically related baby in their arms.
While surrogacy has, in a sense, turned the mystery of conception into a job for medical professionals and lab technicians, it provides a truly unique opportunity to hold a baby of your own for people who just 50 years ago could not even hope for that. This proves once again how miraculous medicine can be and that even problems that were always thought to be unsolvable are within its power.
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