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

“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.

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.

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.

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.”

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.

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.

You know, you can condemn this practice without condemning the women who agree to be surrogates.

Agreed, Emjaybee. And hopefully I didn’t come across as condemning them.

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.