Judith Warner gets this one right: While outsourcing childbirth to poor women in developing countries is not “empowering,” this issue is fraught with ambiguity and there are no easy answers.
“The human body is not lent out, is not rented out, is not sold,” France’s highest court ruled back in 1991, when it outlawed surrogate motherhood. In the United States, lip service has long been paid to the notion that women can’t be instrumentalized as baby-making machines. Indeed, one of the ways that surrogacy survives here is under cover of the fiction that the women who bear other women’s babies do so not for the money – which would be degrading – but because they “love to be pregnant.”
But our rules of decency seem to differ when the women in question are living in abject poverty, half a world away. Then, selling one’s body for money is not degrading but empowering. And the transaction is not outsourcing of the basest nature – not modern-day wet-nursing taken to the nth degree – but a good deal for everyone concerned. “There’s nothing wrong in this,” Priyanka Sharma, another surrogate, concluded the Marketplace segment. “We give them a baby and they give us much-needed money. It’s good for them and for us.”
If we’re going to do the surrogacy thing — and we already are doing it — then let’s call it what it is: An exchange of money for services. And let’s not pussyfoot around the fact that in a whole lot of service industries, the people providing services are poor, female and brown. Think of housekeepers, fieldworkers, childcare providers, elder-care workers — all of these women use their bodies in the service of others. Many of them are exploited, some are abused, and most are under-paid. But we only go into panic mode when the services provided are sexual.
I’ll be the first to admit that something feels different about work involving sex and reproduction; perhaps it’s because sex and reproduction are so fundamental to the human condition that it seems wrong to pay for them. Perhaps it’s because the people doing the paying are almost universally part of a more privileged class than the person doing the selling. Or perhaps it’s because women have traditionally been cast as the gatekeepers of sex and reproduction, and there are deeply entrenched cultural assumptions about how, when and with whom it’s acceptable to trade sex and reproduction for goods (tangible and not), and women who sell sex and reproduction outside of those bounds violate social propriety in such a way that it offends even feminists like me. I don’t know.
Rich white American women paying poor women of color in developing nations to gestate their children for them seems wrong. I don’t oppose reproductive technologies, but it gets trickier when you’re paying someone in a far less privileged situation to be a human incubator for you. I have to roll my eyes at the way surrogacy is framed in order to fit in with acceptable constructions of femininity — women are surrogate mothers because they love being pregnant, not because they need to make money and pregnancy is a pretty good way to do that. Addressing the poverty issue would require us to actually look at who is getting ahead and at whose expense, and that doesn’t tend to go over so well. Addressing surrogacy as one service industry among many wherein the bodies of poor women of color are used to further the wants of wealthier white people would require us to look at the systematic racisms and inequalities that prop up the entire global economy. And that definitely does not go over so well.
And so instead we get a story about entitled, selfish white women, and brown women who are doing the work we wouldn’t do, but who maybe should consider themselves lucky for getting scraps.
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Something that continually strikes me is that the issues surrounding surrogacy and the quite literal “lending out” of the bodies of poor women of color DO NOT get enough coverage or discussion in a myriad of arenas–the academy included. I think the issues of globalization and labor (including reproductive labor) are very much interconnected, and it’s very interesting (and troubling) that the exploitation of bodies is, quite often, only at the forefront and “panicked” over when sex and/or reproduction come into the mix.
Thank you for this post, Jill. It’s more eloquently written and the sentiments are right on, in addition to being well-expressed!
Surrogacy is a very complex issue. While I agree that using the poor as baby incubators for the rich is a rather disgusting idea in and of itself, I am also worried about the increasing number of laws in America which forbid paying surrogate mothers for their services.
As a lower class woman in America, I planned on becoming a surrogate mother during college in order to pay for my college loans, but Indiana law prohibits me from being paid for my services. While the fact that I would have to do something like that to pay off my loans is sad (college should be way more affordable), I also find it sad that a viable money-making option has been taken from me. The poor have so few opportunities to get ahead, why take this opportunity away just because it’s distasteful to our sensibilities?
This topic reminds me of an article I just read on organ selling by living beings. There is such a strong statement being made in the quest for life, whether it being creating one or sustaining one, that some people are considered more valuable while others more expendible. Quite frankly I find it disgusting. Some days we are living in a sci-fi novel.
Surrogacy gets support by people sympathizing with those who can not procreate. Which makes me question do we even have the right to if nature is not allowing it to happen. I think about this alot since many friends and family members who are very religious and against embryonic stem cell research and abortion have used scientific methods (in-vitro, etc.) to become pregnant. Surrogacy still needs science if these white women want an 100% white child.
In terms of the ethical questions involved, I think all the issues you bring up are important, but I think it also overlaps with things like pharmaceutical testing in poor countries. Even if this didn’t involve the fraught issues of sexuality and reproduction, it’d be a matter of people “choosing” to have others put things in their bodies because doing so gives the best chance of providing themselves and their families with the resources to survive.
And, it’s true it’s problematic for concerned privileged people to say, “Oh, hey, you’re too ignorant to decide that’s a rational choice and really feel empowered by it; just keep struggling with your poverty instead of doing this”–but it’s also terribly problematic to tolerate a system where that’s a rational choice, where there aren’t enough other choices people can make.
I completely understand your point. However, what solution do you suggest?
I think one of the main problems is not immediately obvious: why aren’t reproductive issues treated as health problems? Why can only the very rich get help? Even if you have a dear friend who would do it for free, her insurance policy would have to be amazing for her ‘chosen’ pregnancy to be covered. Say she’ll do it for free but needs you to cover her expenses, your insurance company is extremely unlikely to even cover the implantation, let alone her costs.
I don’t think this issue is just limited to rich taking advantage of poor – it’s middle class people who are desperate for their own child left with few options.
foxglove, I get what you’re saying, but it concerns me that the poor are encouraged to ‘get ahead’ only in ways that benefit the rich, and don’t give them any long-term ability to improve their position.
I recall reading a piece about a well-known attorney who arranged surrogacy contracts; he said his agency had learned to contract with women who were in it for the money, and who preferably had already been mothers. Women who saw themselves as doing a great deed tended to change their minds about giving up the child.
I don’t think using scientific methods to become pregnant is problematic in and of itself. (Though they are, as far as I know, more accessible to upper middle class and rich people which I do think is problematic.) I don’t think anyone needs to say “nature doesn’t want to me to have a child” unless that’s her personal decision on the matter.
But when it becomes an issue of taking advantage of poor women and women of color and using their bodies to make children, that’s another story. It’s not that I feel great about taking an opportunity away from anyone but the issue is that they need better opportunities.
Let’s please Jill, make recognize the fact that not all “white” people are not well off and therefore, possibly not make the reference to poverty as strictly an issue that POC deal with.
Although the recognition of the exceptional division of income among racial lines worldwide is important, I think it is also extremely important to not ignore the fact that economic disparity and injustice does not happen simply along the ‘color line’. To do so only furthers two ideals, both racist; 1) that only people of color suffer from poverty and that any poverty among the socially defined boundary of ‘white’ doesn’t qualify as worthy of any mention or recognition at all, which of course furthers the idea that poverty may in fact be a genetic issue, which of course it isn’t.
As poverty itself is a social problem within which racial associated tensions arise and are emphasized, it would be helpful to recognize that poverty is an issue of social power imbalances arising out of and fostered by deliberate unequal economic distribution.
Also, when the surrogate issue is looked at through the lens of the social institutions that give rise to economic disparity, one sees that as an individual moves further down the scale of poverty, one loses one’s agency. Since poverty is most often a construct in which power plays a large part; one has to wonder about the social justice problems associated with surrogate parenting.
Power imbalance is most evident by how employment or enterprise conducted by the impoverished recognizes little or none at all, the amount of dissipation of the employed individual’s personhood that must take place in the interest of serving the needs or desires of the employer.
Surrogate mothering requires the absolute surrender of one’s entire life, that is; the entire physical and mental body as well as one’s future well being and physical health, in exchange for something temporal and fixed – some cash, which will most likely not be as lasting or as all encompassing as the physical and mental sacrifice the surrogate must undergo.
The ability for anyone in poverty or of lower class status (both of course being often interchangeable) to negotiate for just remuneration are doubtful in that 1) the life of an impoverished individual is viewed as significantly less valuable than the non-impoverished or higher class members 2) the paucity of funds that then causes a deprivation of basic needs causes the impoverished to have less negotiating power as in less time to hold out for a better deal and often a higher rate of competition as increased economic disparity often increases birth rates among the impoverished (another issue-banned abortion and planned parenthood services anyone?) which increases the ratio of need for renumeration to those wanting services.
So, if an impoverished individual has nothing else to barter but their bodies, then of course, their bodies become rental space, but never prime as the body of an impoverished person is never prime, nor will most impoverished people be able to create enough of a shortage of supply to create greater demand, therefore disabling their ability to drive up the value of their bodily real estate.
Couple that with the fact that the exchange of cash for womb space psychologically and socially separates the organ from the individual in which it rests, a severe dehumanization of the organ owner. Also, from a feminist perspective, it seems like another effort by the class holding the power, to exploit the woman’s body and reduce the woman from full personhood to nothing more than an incubator with a human brain.
I don’t know if I made any sense, but there’s my take. The business is ugly, just like organ selling and egg selling, ugly and dehumanizing.
Short editing, some errors above, I hope though that my intended message came across.
I am from India and I am aware of the surrogate motherhood issue. However I would not call it a big issue moral or otherwise. The money earned by these women help them to not only better their lives but also improve the lives of their children. Also throughout their pregnancy these women are well taken care of to ensure a smooth childbirth and a healthy child. I wouldn’t call this exploitation. This is a service being provided by willing women who do not consider the same demeaning.
The same goes for prostitution also. We all know that unlike women, men are more blase about sex and need it more frequently. So what is wrong in some women offering sex for money.
Women by removing themselves of the burden of being the the gatekeepers of sex and reproduction will do themselves and the society a big favour.
Also please note morality is a luxury which only the rich can afford. Let the poor reach a level where an issue can be debated on moral terms rather than on survival terms and then start preaching morality to them.
Also among the poor it is not only the women who use every means available to them to earn a living even the men do so.
Very thought-provoking, Jill. And chilling. As an infertile woman, I have wondered about surrogacy or adoption in the future. I find it so hard, sometimes, to reconcile the fact that my desire to have a child will ultimately come at the expense of someone else’s body. I heard the NPR story and its tone did not sit well with me, and I agree with both you and the Warner commentary: let’s dig a little deeper beyond what *seems* and what *is.* Oy.
I’d like to echo, and amplify a bit, on two points. In many ways its almost as if US law were crafted with the intention of producing this outcome. In the early days of surrogacy there were several legal cases in which the surrogate mother refused to honor her contract and fought in court for custody of the child; in many of those cases the surrogate won. That alone is going to provide a strong incentive for people needing, or just wanting, to use a surrogate mother to look outside the US; and also to look to poverty stricken women who can’t afford lawyers.
Add to that the fact that many states have, as foxglove points out, actually made it illegal for American women to rent out their uteri. Which, when you think about it is a law coming from the same idiocy that outlaws abortion.
I’m not at all trying to dispute that there is some serious racism, classism, and other bad stuff involved in USAians outsourcing surrogacy to the third world, there is. What disturbs me is that it seems as if the laws in the USA were designed specifically to result in that outcome. I don’t think they were, it seems more likely that it was just standard legal idiocy meeting the usual patriarchial “women can’t be allowed to control their own bodies” crap.
Christine wrote: Surrogacy gets support by people sympathizing with those who can not procreate. Which makes me question do we even have the right to if nature is not allowing it to happen.
Yes, we do. It isn’t “natural” to eat with implements. It isn’t “natural” to get surgery when you have appendicitius. It isn’t “natural” to artificially heat our homes. It isn’t “natural” to discuss things on the internet.
It is utterly innane to argue that “nature” is somehow special *in*this*circumstance* if you aren’t willing to apply that standard to every other aspect of life. Given that you aren’t living in a cave, but are (gasp, shock, surprise) using unnatural stuff like electricity, clothing, and computers, I think its pretty silly of you to claim that people with fertility problems should submit to “nature”, when you yourself don’t.
My parents used a surrogate mother to have me, back in 1985. They paid for her four kids to go to college, and I’ve never met the woman. Her address on my birth certificate is of a hotel in Florida, though that’s not where she was from. I’ve always wanted to ask her if she regrets it, if she felt it a violation of her body and her integrity.
My parents told me when I was eight, and I’ve felt like I’d been bought ever since. It’s not a pretty thing, to feel contempt and shame for the way you came into the world.
Bear with me here, like BabyPop I’m a feminist dealing with infertility issues and I’m trying to figure out how I feel about surrogacy. I personally don’t plan to use a surrogate (I will either eventually get pregnant or adopt) but I’m not sure if being a surrogate is really that different from any bodily labor people do for money.
The real problem here as far as I can figure is the idea that poor people often find themselves with no other choice but to rent their health and bodies to do dangerous, physically damaging “work”. Is a coal miner who risks serious short and long term health complications for money significantly different than a woman who surrogates a baby? I feel like there is a difference but I can’t put my finger on it so maybe someone can help me out. Is it only that it is relating to babies and sex?
what an amazing blog :)
i am from indonesia, which includes in the group of developing countries. at least, i haven’t read about this outsourcing, but please don’t put any further generalization since if it already happening in my country it has to be undercover until certain period of time.
for me, the outsourcing surrogacy can be accepted as long as the women can’t give their baby deliveries for medical reasons. but i wouldn’t agree if it is only because of “beauty” reasons. but then, if the policy allows the doctors legitimation it may leads into another point. which is to make sure that doctors will hold the Hippocrates’s code of ethics.
psychologically, i won’t be good for the babies. the babies can feel what feel what the mothers, or the ones whom wombs they live in, feel and thought. and it assured by religiosity approach.
I’ll try. I am not a coal miner; I’m an electrician. Most folks don’t think of that as having the health risks that say, coal mining does, but for what it’s worth, this is one of the “top ten dangerous jobs”, and most construction electricians do not live to collect more than two years of pension. We are exposed to substances such as silica dust, benzene, asbestos, etc. that shortens our lives. I knew that coming in. I knew that I could be trading future longevity for my living wage, and it was a trade I took knowing full well the potential consequences. I don’t see the “babies and sex” part as being the problem.
What gets me, is that the work of surrogate motherhood is viewed as valuable only because of who is the main beneficiary of the work. When that same poor woman bears her own child, that is considered “worthless” work as far as society is concerned (oh, yes it is. Think about how women don’t receive social security credit for childraising. Think about the lack of paid leave. Think about the time frames given for women who’ve fallen on hard times and applied for welfare—-how they don’t get a break from the system because of the difficulty of finding childcare compatible with work hours).
See, we live in a world where nanny work is considered valuable, but that same work done by a mother for her own children is not. We live in a world where a child born to a poor mother is considered worthless (even by some “feminists”, who view poor women and their children as the primary scourge of the Planet). Yet, let that same child be adopted by a wealthy white couple, and that child is now considered worthwhile. We live in a world where we are fed happy human-interest stories by the media about adoption and the rescue of orphans and refugees—stories that are completely divorced from the reality of how those orphans and refugees came into being.
At th end of the workday, my labor is considered valuable (even if I am not). My labor as an electrician benefits a helluva lot of people. Not just the “important” people, either. Yet, my labor as an electrician is considered valuable whether it is performed at the housing project, the unemployment office, the hospital, the oil refinery, the powerhouse. My labor as a mother is not. It also, benefits more people than just my daughter and myself. But my daughter would be considered of more worth as a person if she had been adopted by a wealthy family, than just growing up being raised by her natural mother.
This is all about who has the power to determine whose lives are valuable. And it’s personal, in every sense of the word.
Oh my word, La Lubu, you hit the nail on the head with your whole post, but the part in bold really resonated with me. I had never encountered such an opinion until reading a letter to the editor in my hometown paper by a self-professed feminist saying that she got on the pill 30+ years ago and that women are solely at fault for their own poverty b/c they should’ve just been on the pill. My jaw dropped.
Fizgig – I have ruled out surrogacy myself as well. I joked about it with my friends and family when I first learned of my health problems, telling them I’d have to rent their womb, but beyond that, I think that not only would the cost be prohibitive, I also would feel I could not personally ask a friend or relative to lend me their womb. I do wish I could find more about specifically pro-choice adoption.
Mael – Thank you for sharing your own story. I read a lot of stories about the impact of adoption on children, but not so much about those of children who were birthed through surrogacy.
I wonder about the legal issues surrounding surrogacy. What if a surrogate mother miscarries? Can legal action be taken against her, or does she just lose her payment? What if the surrogate changes her mind and wants to terminate the pregnancy? What if the obstetrician recommends a c-section and she refuses? (There has already been a case, in the US, of a naturally pregnant woman being tried for murder because of such a refusal.) What if the pregnancy is endangering the surrogate mother’s life?
At the beginning of the article, “Julie” mentions that she has no way of knowing if a surrogate’s behavior is being “policed,” but I’m guessing – and a couple of other commenters have echoed this – that the poorer a surrogate mother is, the less agency she has. How much control does the client have over the surrogate’s body? I’m assuming surrogacy contracts cover this.
Voiding out the role of the surrogate, does anyone feel this topic borders on the sale of children?
Kate, I agree with you to a point, but the question is whether you and I are in a superior position to determine whether a woman has sufficient agency to make a decision about her body. As a general principle bans on surrogacy are intellectually equivalent to bans on prostitution or bans on abortion. It is one person telling another person “I know what’s best for you.”
The issue is not surrogacy, but agency. We can’t resolve our qualms about any type of work that impacts our personhood until everyone on earth has sufficient food, clean water, access to education and comprehensive healthcare. Then if a woman chooses to lease her body for a friend or a new bmw, then it is none of our business.
Damn right. Overall brilliant insights La Lubu.
Just remembered something I’d read a while back. Cows, by an interesting coincidence, have the same gestation period as humans, the article I remembered pointed out that, from a medical standpoint, a fetus/placenta combination is a highly efficient parasite and that in principle there shouldn’t be any difficulty in gestating a human inside a cow. Anyone have any thoughts on that one?
La Lubu Thank you. I hadn’t looked at it that way before, but you are spot on, and its disturbing….
Christine Not me. It feels like rental of a uterus to me, though I can see how it might be possible for other people to view it as baby sale. Personally, I see the adoption racket, especially as it applies to the adoption of infants from the third world, as being much more like selling babies.
I hate to break it to you, but not every infertile woman is white. Or rich. And as I recently wrote in the comments on Melissa’s post about this very subject on Shakesville, if you really think deciding to use a surrogate in another country is easy, I’d hate to see what you think is hard.
Foxglove wrote: I also find it sad that a viable money-making option has been taken from me.
Are you effing kidding me?? Wow. I’m going to guess that you don’t have children, nor have ever been pregnant, because, y’know, it’s a lot of work and you’re not going to look the same afterwards…if ever. If you want to earn money for college, do donor egg, but for the gods sake, whatever you do, don’t become a surrogate, it’s clear you’ve not put any thought into it whatsoever.
Oh dear gods I can’t even read the rest of these comments I’m so angry. The problem is that people who aren’t infertile are making judgement call on issues they know absofreakinglutely nothing about. NO ONE is saying that international surrogacy is TEH BEST THING EVER and that there aren’t issues of finance and inequality, race and class, but there is so much more involved, and until you are in it, you need to keep the moral judgements out of it.
I have to say, this is one of the first posts on Feministe that I’ve read where I’ve come away disappointed, disgusted, angry, and very, very, very surprised at the racial overtones. Women who need surrogates are going where they can find them affordably, and quite frankly, they don’t give a crap as to the color of the surrogate. If surrogacy laws weren’t as messed up in this country as they are (as in, if it’s not outright illegal, usually the surrogate is considered the mother, leaving the biological parents to adopt their own children – which means the surrogate can choose not to release the child/children), if it were “affordable” (because not many people, after years of infertility treatments, can stump up the $35k+ it costs for treatment alone with surrogacy and no guarantee the surrogate will get pregnant), they wouldn’t be going overseas in the first place. It’s all in those little minor details that have been ignored in this post.
So. You really want to know why women choose surrogacy? Why not go here and peruse the entries from the 2007 Creme de la Creme posts at Stirrup Queens. Go read the Infertile Informer (http://theinfertileinformer.blogspot.com/), which features news about infertility from around the world – including, gasp shock horror, the opinions of brown people themselves.
A little education goes a very long way, me peeps.
Ah, thank you, Oro.
Infertility does not select by color or affluence, and surrogacy is not about procuring white babies.
Generally couples who choose surrogacy do so because between them, they lack a functional uterus. There are uterine malformations that result in pregnancy being a lifethreatening condition. Clearly gay male couples don’t have a uterus between them, which does tend to hamper gestation a bit, and there are still plenty of states and adoption agencies that do not support gay adoption.
Also, regarding the whole ‘it’s not natural,’ aspect of Assisted Reproductive Technology: That’s a fine position to take, as long as you’re willing to apply it evenly to YOUR medical life, as well. Are you willing to die of asthma, simple infections, or complications during childbirth? Are you really going to decline all modern medical treatment on the grounds that lifesaving drugs and procedures aren’t ‘natural’? No? Hmm.
Also please note morality is a luxury which only the rich can afford.
This resonated with me. Not long ago my child’s school implemented an organic only snack rule. We cannot afford those foods for ourselves and yet we are expected to buy them for 26 kids? When I complained the teacher lectured me on my lack of food morality. Ah, to afford such a luxury.
While I found much disturbing about the article the line about the woman being able to afford a home for HER children grabbed me. I grew up in a world where pregnancy and childbirth was not worshiped or fetished but instead just a part of life. My mother worked two menial jobs for us to live an awful apartment in a building we shared with such scary people that we were afraid to go outside and play and where you had to lean all the way over your food to keep roaches from falling into your cereal while you were eating. If she could have been cared for (and that included seeing an actual doctor which is unheard of in many places with dentists even rarer) carry a baby for 40 lousy weeks and then get enough money for a whole house? Sheesh. She died at 52 years old, broken from her life of poverty and neglect. She did many things that would be viewed as less than moral and with each one I know that she died a little death but she did them to survive. Her loving sacrifice meant that my brother and I were given a chance for something better. I am sure that many of these women are willing to sacrifice for the same.
Oro- not every woman has physical issues with pregnancy, which is why most surrogates have already had one or more children themselves. I had a very easy pregnancy and delivery and would seriously consider carrying a child for a family member or close friend. I do have bonding issues and I doubt that I could carry a child to term and then have it leave my life entirely. That being said, I do see how if I was compensated for the time and energy used, I would consider a womb rental as a way of helping my family.
I have no issues with women who feel capable of doing the job getting work but I do have issues with people who try to get around laws by going overseas. For me the issues is with the ‘outsourcing’ and not the job itself. Yes, the laws are messed up and the prices for healthcare and treatments are outrageous but does that justify bypassing them?
if you really think deciding to use a surrogate in another country is easy, I’d hate to see what you think is hard.
Uh . . . I don’t know. Maybe living in a country where renting your body out for some rich person’s pregnancy is you best option for survival so that your own kids don’t die of starvation?
For fuck’s sake. Make all the arguments you want about the legitimacy of surrogacy, but please don’t be so arrogant as to act like deciding to pay someone thousands and thousands of dollars to be a surrogate is some kind of OMG HARD DECISION. Yeah, not being able to get pregnant when you want to fucking sucks. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. But I can indeed think of situations in life that are much, much harder. The vast majority of people in this world are in situations that are much, much harder. If you have reliable shelter and aren’t worrying about where your next meal will come from, you are in a small minority and very lucky. As am I. To debate the morality of how you will spend thousands of dollars to have a child is a luxury. And no, I don’t think that choosing a surrogate is the easiest choice that a person with the means to do so will face in their lives. But can we please keep some sort of perspective here? To make such a statement on a totally different post might be a different story, but on a post about how women are choosing to act as surrogates to try to escape crippling poverty? There aren’t any words.
But we are all “in it”, like it or not. The inherent inequality and oppression involved in surrogacy speak to the very core of a woman’s worth—how and why and where we are valued. How much our lives are worth. Our lives are wrapped in this cloth. Our histories are buried in this.
Why is surrogacy “needed”? Because the parental rights of single mothers are no longer routinely terminated immediately after birth. That was how it worked in the “good old days” (and can I just say I love Moms Mabley’s take on “the good old days”? “I lived through ‘em. Don’t know what was so good about ‘em.”). Mothers used to have their babies taken from them and placed for adoption against their will. Legal abortion means some women aren’t giving birth to begin with. Young women used to be thrown out of school for being pregnant. Native American women had their children taken from them and passed off to white families. In other words, greater agency for women who have been historically marginalized means that women who previously benefited from their marginalization have to pursue other avenues.
Enter “outsourcing”. Women don’t have the same rights, the same access, the same agency, across the globe. And that’s awfully handy for exploitation. I see many parallels between this version of outsourcing, and the industrial version. With corporate industry, the appeal is: no labor unions, no workers compensation, no environmental regulations, a workforce living on the edge of survival with few alternatives, and in many cases a helpful paramilitary force to keep workers movements down. With birth outsourcing, it’s what? Much of the same.
And that low, low price. Their low, low price. Because what do they have to negotiate with? Where is their power? If they had more power, would they still choose to rent out their wombs for that price? Would they choose to rent out their wombs at all?
And if not, what then? What would be the alternative, in a future world of women with the full means of survival, with a full range of options for planning for their future, with full access to all institutions of power?
And how can those considerations be divorced from “moral judgement”?
Unless you have firsthand evidence that Foxglove hasn’t done her research, then you’re engaging in the same patronizing behavior Kristin mentions in comment # 22 – the “I know what’s best for you” attitude. Why does her consideration of such an option make it “clear” to you that she hasn’t “put any thought into it whatsoever?” Furthermore, why does her comment make you angry, as opposed to merely concerned? Her life and choices have no effect on you, so I’m surprised that you react with such vehemence.
The issues of finance and inequality, race and class are what are being discussed here, not the practice of surrogacy itself. If two people with equal bargaining power enter into a surrogacy arrangement, then that’s great. It’s when that power is out of balance that the ethics of such an arrangement become questionable.
I don’t think women are seeking out surrogates of a particular race. However, we’re living in a global economy in which white people tend to have more money than people of color. (Obviously there are exceptions to this.) That’s the reality, and that’s what needs to change.
Finally, you imply in your comment that no one in this forum is aware that people of color also suffer from infertility. And, again, infertility itself isn’t the issue here. The issue is that this article demonstrates a perpetuation of colonialism, in which people in poorer nations are forced to support themselves by catering to our needs.
Wow. I got $2000 for donating eggs 15 years ago, when it was still a newish field and using an egg donor was still not really accepted. Now donors routinely get upwards of $10K, with gorgeous athletic blond Ivy Leaguers able to bid up the prices even higher.
Donating eggs is no walk in the park (hello large needles in your hips nightly!) but it’s nothing compared to a pregnancy. Even the $80K Warner cites as the cost of a US surrogate doesn’t favorably compare on a pro-rata basis. Which kind of tells you that the womb is less valued than the baby itself.
“To debate the morality of how you will spend thousands of dollars to have a child is a luxury.”
Under this argument, prenatal care is also a luxury item. It could certainly be argued that in the global scheme of things, medical care of any kind IS an indulgent luxury item, but is that really a position we want to take?
I believe what Oro was responding to was the incredibly dismissive tone that this post takes towards infertility. Reading this post, infertility is a white person’s problem, rich person’s problem, and more specifically, it’s a rich white WOMAN’s problem. What a load of bullshit.
Aren’t we past assigning all infertilty to women? I mean, sure, it was all the rage in the bible and several royal families, but theoretically we’re beyond that.
Aside from that, female infertility is very much a feminist issue.
I am infertile. I utilized ART to get pregnant. Guess why I needed it? Because for almost ten years I couldn’t get a doctor to take my pelvic pain seriously. I was brushed off and told that it was just normal ‘women’s troubles’ until the undiagnosed Endometriosis had really fucked with my innards and made menstruation (kind of key for pregnancy) a debilitating event. The HMO’s response? “Bummer. Would you like some more painkillers? No? How about a hysterectomy? Well, that’s all we cover.”
My HMO will cover incredibly shoddy followup care for as many miscarriages as my body can manage, but no medical care to try to diagnose or treat causes of miscarriage. That’s a luxury item.
The moral issues of surrogacy in the US (and India) are valid and should be discussed, but could we maybe discuss them without vilifying the infertile?
Absolutely what I clumsily attempted to say. The entire issue focuses around agency. I don’t know how Oro, you got from that a criticism of those who suffer from infertility. But I don’t see how an infertile couple’s desire to have children should trump the question of whether poor people, whether in America or in any other country have the power to negotiate a deal that best compensates for their sacrifice.
Another troubling aspect of this whole scenario, which a few have touched on, is the mind of the surrogate parent themselves. Again, what agency does the surrogate have? It seems to me the same of misogyny at play when consideration of the natural process of the birth mother bonding with the child in her body is ignored. Are women simply uterus holders and the process of bonding that occurs something that must be ignored and belittled?
Pro-lifers love to talk about adoption as an option to abortion, which points up the same issue; that a carrying a child for nine months is an effortless process and that once the birth is over she shrinks back to size and moves on.
Kiki: As a poor woman who was a single mother who also had to raise her kids in nasty apartment buildings in the low-rent part of town and all its inherent social problems (which wingnuts refuse to recognize can have irreversible effects on a child), I heart what you say.
But frankly, surrogate parenting and any other services that the middle class or uppers can provide, regardless of the cash presented, remove those players from responsibility for creating the poverty in which you, I and others around the world are forced to live in.
I remember a welfare activist friend of mine telling me that she thought being daycare providers for the middle and upper middle class a great option for welfare mothers. She rationalized that this would give poor mothers the option to stay home with their own children while earning money to survive. I disputed this strongly. Poor women have always been stuck in the position of providing services for the wealthy or better off, from the plantation wet nurse to the full time housekeeper.
Unlike Lalubu’s skilled trade in which bargaining took place through organization of the workers, women and poor people do not and cannot afford the luxury to bargain or negotiate when what they offer as a skill is that of being a women or being poor. Owning a uterus and impoverishment, unfortunately, do not garner such specialization that effective organization is possible in order to control competition and thus withdrawal services until satisfactory terms of the deal are reached.
When someone is starving or living in substandard conditions, the need is immediate, unless all starving or impoverished women with uterus’ organized and refused to surrogate until proper compensation terms are reached, I can’t believe that these people have had the opportunity to fully exercise their potential voice.
Call me a big headed liberal, but frankly, I have found myself in often in the untenable position of having to barter with little agency with people in a far better position to name the terms. I always came out the loser, which is of course a big reason why I’m still struggling today.
I don’t think being paid to carry and birth another’s child would have solved my problems of poverty or put a dent in the real social problem of poverty and economic power.
“To debate the morality of how you will spend thousands of dollars to have a child is a luxury.”
Under this argument, prenatal care is also a luxury item. It could certainly be argued that in the global scheme of things, medical care of any kind IS an indulgent luxury item, but is that really a position we want to take?
Akeeyu: no, my point was that Oro was presenting the decision of whether or not use a foreign surrogate as an extreme hardship by saying “if you don’t think this decision is hard, I’d like to know what you think is.” I found this to be extremely dismissive of the surrogate mothers who are central to this conversation, or in fact completely ignoring them. I do think that there is something seriously wrong with presenting the ability to make such a decision as an extreme hardship when the only reason that the surrogacy mother market exists, the very reason that one is capable of making such a decision, is because of extreme poverty. I don’t think that people should be punished for their wealth or class. I also think that when one’s wealth and class gives them basic rights that others don’t have, when they are standing next to someone who has not been given the right to basic shelter and sustenance, that the wealthy person has the right to present their situation as an extreme hardship.
I was using the word “luxury” in the sense of “something that one has that most do not,” not in the sense of “something one has but doesn’t need.” Based on how the majority of the world lives, my little one bedroom apartment is a luxury. That doesn’t mean that I don’t think I should have it, or that housing is a human right. I do. I think that everyone should have the right to at least my own basic accommodations. But here in reality, I my apartment is still a luxury.
Asking people to acknowledge and appreciate what they have is not the same as asking them to relinquish it. My goal was not to vilify the infertile.
For the record, I feel on this issue like most others seem to: absolutely everything about this arrangement feels wrong on every level, but the arrangement is also greatly benefiting the women we’re concerned about being exploited. Of course, one can be both exploited and well-paid at the same time, which is what I think is happening here. Whether or not one cancels out the other, though, I haven’t yet decided.
I know this discussion is mainly about surrogacy and the intersection of race and class, but I can’t let this go. Sania: Are you serious? I don’t know how long you’ve been reading this blog, but I know no one around here enjoys engaging in gender stereotypes.
Sania: Like everyone else has more eloquently explained in this thread, we aren’t saying that they’re necessarily being forced to do something that they don’t want to do. HOWEVER, it’s not a real choice for these women if this the only real way for these women to take care of their children.
Infertility is perceived as a rich woman’s problem (and, despite the reality of widespread male infertility, it is still perceived as a woman’s problem) because it is often rich (or relatively rich) women who have the opportunity to treat or circumvent it. But it is not a problem that haunts only the rich (and it is certainly not limited to white people; in the slide show that accompanies Warner’s column, the only Western surrogacy users depicted are an asian couple). And it is not only rich people who find ways around it, either. Many couples go deep into debt for repeated IUI and IVF cycles, or for adoption processes that can take years to complete. Some – myself and my husband included – participate in clinical trials of new ART medication, spending maybe 2 or 3 thousand dollars (that we don’t really have) for the chance, however remote, to be pregnant, rather than the 10-15 per cycle it would normally cost, and taking our chances with the medication’s safety and efficacy.
I think the heart of Warner’s column lies in her last few paragraphs:
In some countries, such as Britain and Australia, ART is covered by the national health care systems (perhaps people there are less likely to resort to surrogacy in order to obtain children?). But in the U.S., a single cycle of IVF runs more than $15K, rarely covered by insurance, and often people do not get pregnant from the first, the second, or even the third cycle. $10K for a surrogate in a foreign country may be a non-wealthy couple’s best chance for affording a biological child (I’m leaving the costs of adoption out of the discussion because that is a huge subject that can’t be reasonably addressed in this context). So maybe we should concern ourselves not only with rich westerners exploiting poor easterners, but also with the paucity and inadequacy of options for people who are not wealthy in the respective contexts of their own societies.
So, I’m currently a poor graduate student, but will soon be propelled into upper middle class as I start my career. If somebody offered me 10 million bucks to give birth to their kid, I’d do it.
And if I was poor and lived in India where costs are lower, I’d do it for less than 10 million. A lot less.
I agree that it’s totally wrong to make infertility a woman’s problem.
But as for the rest: I am under the impression that getting a surrogate mother is mostly done by rich white people, partly because they’re the ones who can afford it. If I’m wrong, I’d like to know that, but that was certainly my impression.
I’m not trying to be hard-hearted toward people who suffer from infertility, but we all have the right to discuss the issues when they end up having an impact on other people and involving issues of economics and race, which they do in this case whether that’s fair (to anyone) or not.
The thing that keeps freaking me out is that “women’s work” is generally not valued by the market at all, so earning above average wages for doing something so female and unskilled seems like it’s a situation that might not last long. I keep getting creepy visions of poorer, more desperate women in a less wealthy country than India bidding the prices down. And the only other kind of unskilled female labour where women have been able to earn high wages has been sex work, and I keep thinking of the effect globalisation has had on that industry… and, ack.
The practicalities of possible coercion aren’t the same, of course, because it’s in the prospective parents’ best interests to make sure the pregnant mother is well and healthy and unstressed. I just hope all of them know that.
And are there regulations on this practice? Seems like there should be.
I’d also point out that circumventing male infertility is much easier than circumventing female infertility. (Exceptions being made for strategies like ICSI.) Using a sperm donor is infinitely easier than obtaining an egg donor, gestational carrier, or surrogate.*
*I think that there’s been some confusion here about surrogacy versus gestational carrying. In traditional surrogacy, which is what’s banned in parts of the US, the woman who is pregnant is also the source of the egg. In gestational carrying, she is not the genetic parent.
I desperately hate the entire concept of the pursuit of biological children. I don’t know how to articulate this particularly clearly, but the centering of the need to have a genetically related child unnerves me.
Also, having $10K in disposable income doesn’t make you non-wealthy. It doesn’t put you at the top of the heap, but it makes you vastly better off than most people. I doubt this was your intent, but this sentence reads to me like “people who aren’t insanely wealthy have to find *some* way to have a biological child and thus this is a perfectly acceptable alternative.”
Can someone explain to me how Oro goes from
to criticizing this thread for being too harsh on people who seek out surrogates? Seems to me Oro has just said that Foxglove, an American, should not even consider becoming a surrogate because it’s too burdensome, but that she, an infertile American, should not be criticized for paying women in other countries to do what she ridicules an American woman for even expressing an interest in doing. Boggles the mind.
PS – those tag buttons for comments are awesome. I comment infrequently enough not to have learned how to make blockquotes, but it was so easy!
I agree, Emily. I do not think this article or comment section is critical of infertile women or women who would consider surrogacy in any way. To me, the criticism continues to be more towards a system in which women (at home or abroad) are so desperate for money that they will rent an organ to specifically do work on another’s behalf. I really don’t see this as people being critical of infertile women and/or couples who may decide what their best option may be. Reproductive choice and reproductive freedom is, sadly, an option afforded mostly by wealthier nations and wealthier women. And *duh* – obviously, it’s not *only* infertile whites that seek to adopt, receive fertility treatments, or obtain a surrogate – but it’s pretty silly to me to ignore the fact that there is a large disparity between blacks & whites as far as the U.S. is concerned.
You know, you can condemn this practice without condemning the women who agree to be surrogates. And I do condemn, and I do not think the heartbreak of infertility is a good enough excuse for exploiting another woman’s body. Infertility is not the worst fate that a woman can have, and while I have sympathy, and support women’s rights to do whatever they want with their own bodies, I draw the line at saying woman X’s desire for a child is so justified that she should be allowed to offload the work and risks of gestating that child onto another woman. Maybe you could make an exception for a friend or relative who volunteers to carry the fetus, though issues of coercion make that a little dicey too. It’s quite possible to imagine a woman being pressured into surrogacy by a dysfunctional family.
Pregnancy, even healthy, well-regulated pregnancy, carries risks, up to and including the woman’s death. No matter how well-renumerated a woman is, if she is damaged or killed by her pregnancy, she is going to be the loser in this transaction. And even if she is not, every pregnancy leaves its marks on a woman’s body, and can affect her future health in unforeseen ways.
Women are not things, are not walking wombs. They are people. The fact that many women are poor enough to let themselves be treated in this way in hopes of getting out of poverty does not justify those of us here in the West deciding to treat them that way. You could justify sex tourism, or yes, organ purchasing, just as easily. Or slavery, for that matter.
Indian women are being used because they lack agency to keep the child or otherwise protest their treatment to the people exploiting them. That’s appalling. If you will only enter into a contract which vastly privileges you at another person’s expense, then you are not making a fair or ethical deal.
I think the only way that outsourcing reproduction to developing nations can be alright is if people have a right to have children, especially biological children. If it is a right, on par with food, shelter, and clothing, then it seems to me to be ethical to use for money the womb of a woman who cannot afford to say “no”. I cannot, for the life of me, come up with a reason why people have the right to have children.
Substitute “sex” and “prostitution” and think that it becomes a little clearer.
Jill, I’m with you that something just seems wrong about this kind of surrogacy. And granted, I never have been nor ever will be pregnant, so I’m not exactly qualified as an expert on this sort of thing, but based on my experiences with friends and family members who’ve been pregnant, but I think I’d have to look very skeptically at anyone who claimed to “love being pregnant.” I couldn’t even read that phrase in this blog post without having mental images of Michelle Duggar and her clown-car uterus. (Actually, I think an even more appropriate metaphor for Duggar is the magician who takes a handkerchief out of his pocket and keeps pulling more and more handkerchiefs out until he’s got a string of like 20 of them, but that’s neither here nor there.)
I can see how such surrogacies could be enormously beneficial to third-world women who may not have any other way of making that kind of money, but I just don’t see how being so desperate that you’re renting your uterus out is “empowering.” Unless you’re planning on holding the fetus for ransom or something, and thus have the power to hold something over somebody else? Am I missing something here?
Evil Fizz, I specified biological child because I was trying to respond to a narrow point without attempting to include the enormously complicated question of adoption vs. biological/genetic reproduction. It certainly was not my intent to imply that biological/genetic reproduction is inherently more worthy or important than adoption (I don’t actually think it is). Oh – and thank you for your distinction between surrogacy and gestational carrier. I wonder if that distinction was made in the Warner piece or the NPR piece which preceded it?
I would also say that paying $10K for something does not actually mean one has $10K in disposable income – many people struggling to pay for infertility treatment/circumvention or adoption end up borrowing heavily from family and friends, using credit cards, or even taking out loans.
I think what is problematic about the framing of this discussion is the idea that one party – infertile, relatively wealthy couples – is exploiting another – poor women from developing countries. While that may be true, there are deeper systemic problems on both sides that deserve redress, e.g. endemic poverty and economic opportunity for women in developing countries, insurance/health care costs for infertility treatment, improvement in safety and cost of the domestic and international adoption processes. Outlawing surrogacy/gestational carrying, whether domestic or foreign, without tackling those other issues, may resolve one ethical dilemma, but does it actually do much to help the individual people on either side of the equation?
Oro, please correct me if I’m wrong here, but your post really seems to boil down to this: infertile people want babies, and how they get those babies is not open to criticism, so questions of poverty, exploitation and the treatment of women and women’s work takes a distant back seat to “can you have babies and if so, STFU”.
People in other parts of the world are poor, and their poverty enables us to have things we couldn’t afford if they were in an equal bargaining position. That also gives us an incentive to keep those people poor, because if their standard of living was as high as ours, we couldn’t get things on the cheap anymore. I don’t see why the morality of that changes when “we” means somebody struggling with infertilitly.
$10k is pretty cheap, considering. I know a couple who paid $30k to adopt a Chinese baby girl. In terms of classism you’re still in the more doughy, lower strata of crustification.
I agree with the poster who pointed out that having your own biological child is not a right.
Some people’s obsession with having *biological* children is disturbing.
Just because you *want* something doesn’t mean you’re entitled to go to unethical lengths to get it.
Jen, I am with you. My basic point is why people think they have right to have children. I was not condemning natural vs. unnatural. I was just saying that many people I know who choose drugs or medical procedures to get pregnant are against stem-cell research, abortion and other medical procedures involving women and fetuses. However, my point stands that it is convenient to be against something until one is in need or want to of what they can’t or unable to have.
I know many couples who have resorted to fertility drugs and in-vitro and they are all upper-middle class and upper class women. At $10,000 dollar an in-vitro procedure, which takes most of the time 2-3 attempts, you need money or an expensive health care plan to cover it.
There are some topics completely ignored in this conversation such as reason for infertility. Let’s not ignore the medical issues at the core in place of economics.
Although I did not take the same offense as Orodemniades did to the original post or the subsequent comments, because I do feel this is an issue worth discussion, this sort of remark is what makes people dealing with infertility so sensitive.
SarahMC – Can you please explain how the choice to use a gestational surrogate or otherwise treat infertility represents a “disturbing” “obsession with having biological children”? Do you imagine that adoption is somehow simpler, and therefore requires a less obsessive desire? I would be interested in reading some support for this position.
How does that old saw go? Oh,yeah, just because you can do something, doesn’t mean you should.
I am infertile and when I found out, I did a little happy dance, because if my body had not done so, I would have found a doctor to take care of it, despite my age or lack of children. While part of me cannot understand this yearning people have for children, I do have certain dreams that will never be fulfilled for various reasons and yes, sometimes it hurts to know it will never happen. However, I try not to bring harm to others while attempting to fulfill, at least in some small way, the dreams I have.
Whenever I read about extreme IVF cases or surragacy, I can’t help but thing a great deal of harm (financial, emotional, physical, even environmental) is being done in pursuit of something (a baby) that is supposed to be so good. There are better ways to fulfill the instinct to parent a child and there are better ways to leave a legacy, among others helping other people instead of creating a social class of broody hens.
Uccellina,
Uccellina, I agree nearly 100% with Emjaybee.
What I mean is that just because woman X is in pain because she can’t conceive a child herself, that does not mean she “deserves” a biological child, or a child from another woman’s womb.
I take issue with the notion that women (or men) who suffer from infertility are justified in outsourcing the work and risks of gestating a baby onto another woman who is *desperate* for money and easily exploitable.
Just to be clear, I don’t think that using a surrogate mother is easy. And I certainly realize that not all infertile women are rich and white. But women who can afford to pay other women the tens of thousands of dollars it takes to pay a surrogate mother usually have access to greater resources than the woman they’re paying. Are they always white? Of course not. But I would guess that they’re disproportionately white.
And, to be clear, I’m not trying to say that women who use surrogates are selfish or bad — in fact, at the end of the post I criticized the tone of the Warner article on that end (“instead we get a story about selfish, entitled white women”). I realize that I don’t have answers on this one. I was trying to address some of the ambiguities, not give an answer. And I’m pretty sure that I didn’t even give a definitive opinion in my post, other than saying “there are these really complicated race and class dynamics at play here.”
If you can point me to where I said infertility is a rich white woman’s problem, you can have this blog. I was responding specifically to Warner’s piece, which was about international surrogacy arrangements. Not infertility itself. I really fail to see where I vilified the infertile.
Agreed, Emjaybee. And hopefully I didn’t come across as condemning them.
Jill – I did a little digging out of curiosity, and I don’t know that the people paying surrogate mothers are, in fact, disproportionally white. According to this Christian Science Monitor article from 2006, “Some 75 percent of the clients [of the same surrogacy clinic mentioned in Warner's article] are non-resident Indians from the UK, the US, Japan, and Southeast Asia. ” This 2007 article, from an Indian news website, reports that “40% of childless couples who seek surrogacy are Indians, followed by [non-resident Indians] and foreigners.”
The class and exploitation issues are, of course, still present and very important. But the racial/ethnic breakdown might not be what one would presume.
Not an essay, alas, just a question I’d like to see asked more loudly than it’s being asked: how does a book about a girl become a movie about a boy? And why has not a single critic I can find, even the ones who link to descriptions of the book, noticed this?
Jill,
“Rich white American women paying poor women of color in developing nations to gestate their children for them seems wrong.”
Well, I guess this would be what sits wrong with me. Why? There are no men at all in the above statement, which just plays into a pretty tired stereotype about infertility. Generally, couples who utilize surrogacy do so as a couple. It’s not just some woman on a baby bender saying “Yes, this sounds like a lark–I think I’ll make this decision unilaterally! Now let’s see…who can I find to exploit?”
The problem is that discussions about infertility usually revolve around women. Women are blamed for waiting too long, for being desperate, for not relaxing, for trying to thwart nature, and now I guess we can blame surrogacy entirely on women, too.
I am neither for nor against surrogacy. I don’t think it’s better than sliced bread. I think pregnancy is hard and dangerous and frequently really crappy, whether you’re doing it for yourself or someone else.
Yes, the couples who utilize surrogacy ARE typically wealthy, but infertile couples are not by default wealthy or white. Infertile does not equal ‘pursuing IVF, ART or surrogacy’, but couples utilizing surrogacy are almost exclusively infertile.
A good question might be “Why do couples pursue surrogacy?” Well, generally because there is a serious uterine issue. Guess what causes many serious uterine issues? Fetal DES exposure (which can lead to an improperly shaped uterus). Lack of proper medical care after multiple miscarriages. Lack of insurance coverage to explore causes of multiple miscarriage, which can lead to permanent uterine damage. Insurance companies frequently consider it a better bargain to offer shoddy care after a miscarriage than prevent future miscarriages, even though that shoddy care may result in hysterectomy and death. All of these ARE feminist issues.
It might be interesting to discuss how poor medical treatment of women in country X impacts women in country Y. Fucked up patriarchal overflow, eh?
It might also be interesting to explore how the choices made by infertile couples are heavily influenced by financial status. Typically as money or insurance coverage drops, the physical risk taken on by the female partner tends to rise, which is kind of disturbing.
I expect mainstream media, bloggers and commenters to gloss over these issues and focus exclusively on rich women when discussing infertility and surrogacy. It doesn’t surprise me anymore. I just expected better from Feministe.
interesting debate…
having considered surrogate mothers and adopt at my homeland and abroad, i must say that i find in every post some truth and a lot of ignorance.
I am white, somewhat educated, a cubicle drone, making it from one paycheck to the other, middle class poor. I had a hysterectomy at age 32, at the beginning of what i thought would be a good life. Married of two years, good job overseas etc. Until i was diagnosed with a tumor, 16 cm to 10, and i was told i had to undergo surgery.
With family we chatted about what to do and how. The prospects are slim for us, adopt in your country of origin – which is almost impossible in some countries as lifestyle, income, etc come in to play and are judged by someone from child services. my husband is an artist, thus we are not good material for future parenthood, not enough income was the main reason.
Adopting overseas – taking a child out of its natural habitat? and all the above!
Surrogate mother – can i trust the mother, will she treat this unborn as if it was hers?, will i ever have the money to pay for it? Can I be part of the pregnancy ( and when will i be intrusive to her life) Does she want to be part of the child life once it is born?
In the end, I choose none of the options presented, and by the light was i tempted, desperate and angry. I wanted my child as much as any other women, my link to eternity and all of that. But i came to the conclusion that it was not worth it, but rather that i have to newly re-identify myself as a women without child.
Not an easy task when people ask you why you don’t have children, or that you are still young enough to have them. The awkward face when you tell them “I can’t have children”……oh..I am sorry, i didn’t want to….
Surrogate mothers to an extend have always existed, women who had children for other women we just invented the technology to exclude the sex.
It should be legal, safe and rare. It should be a paid service and a controlled service. After all, what does one do with the child that was born less than perfect. Who keeps the child if the parents don’t want it ?
Saying that, where is the discussion to reason that lead women and their men to go this option. Why the desperation for a child? Why the hurdles (financial mainly in regards to adoption).
And why is society that squeamish about infertility. There are many women who like me mourned all the children she never had, because she can not re-produce.
Some like me choose to stay childless, others will find a way to fill the void if they can. It is human.
So again, make it legal easy for infertile (i had this term to it’s core, i am fertile, i do many things, love many people, work and life and breathe. I am just not a natural born mother.) woman to have children. Make adoption a process about the child and the future parents and not about the pocket book and mortgage payments. Have surrogate mothers, legal safe and controlled environment both for the mother in lieu and the future parents. No abuse for either of them.
And maybe then “outsourcing” won’t be problem.
*english is my second language, all errors mine
Since the choice rests with the surrogate mother so it cannot be classifed as exploitation but yeah it does help the needful people in getting a baby.
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