If I had three wishes, I’d wish to never read the phrase “surro babe” again in my life. Also, I listened to a podcast a while ago (it escapes me), that said the while many surrogates claim to do so to “help” others, all the surrogates in the cited study did not crack out of the bottom 25% of income here in the U.S. Like just say you need the money instead of lying to yourself.
Ugh this is so true-and if they did so and spoke about it honestly, it would illuminate just how much this really is exploitation. Look at places where only altruistic surrogacy is legal like Canada- crickets. Also the woman I mention at the end of this piece calls her baby “belly bud” and I just want to crawl out of my skin every-time she utters it.
Surrogacy makes me sick to my stomach, I never gave it much thought until I became a mother, but since giving birth to my own daughters, I cannot bear to think of these infants taken from their mothers and handed over to strangers. Thankfully commercial surrogacy is still illegal in the UK, and very few women are willing to be a surrogate without being paid, but ofc there are powerful pressure groups pushing for the laws on surrogacy to be relaxed.
One of the weirdest things I’ve observed is that a lot of the pro homebirth/physiological birth crowd in the UK are also very supportive of surrogacy. So they talk all the time about supporting physiological and the connection of mother and baby, and then are totally fine with something that is THE MOST destructive of the mother baby relationship.
It was weeks after I had my second child that I listened to a multi-part podcast on surrogacy and I can’t even explain the amount of crying that happened because it hit me so hard in my early postpartum state, especially the way the whole thing impacts infants.
Interesting what you say about certain groups being supportive, I have similarly seen the home birth crowd often be very supportive of trans ideology and pronoun nonsense as well. It’s like somewhere a switch gets flipped, where “this is how things are and should be” gets bypassed via inclusivity and “shoulds” (like “you should be kind, accepting, polite” etc). Truly strange.
Even the NJ Supreme Court case over Baby M (mentioned in the part about Michigan's history with surrogacy) acknowledged this disparity - and it was one of the first higher court cases touching on the issue: "Intimated, but disputed, is the assertion that surrogacy will be used for the benefit of the rich at the expense of the poor...Nevertheless it is clear to us that it is unlikely that surrogate mothers will be as proportionately numerous among those women in the top twenty percent income bracket as among those in the bottom twenty percent. Put differently, we doubt that infertile couples in the low-income bracket will find upper income surrogates..." (From In Re Baby M, Supreme Court of New Jersey, 1988).
I had to read it a few years ago for a Law and Bioethics class, and that specific point always comes back to me when people try to make a case for surrogacy as some sort of egalitarian, women-helping-women arrangement. The entire decision reads very well as an anti-surrogacy treatise, even though it wasn't even addressing gestational surrogacy at the time, but unfortunately the warnings went unheeded. Subsequent court decisions regarding surrogacy and third-party reproduction are less forthright about the ills that come along with an industry like this, and much harder to read without alarm bells going off the whole time.
I will have to download it. Have you seen that new-ish feminist book “Full Surrogacy Now”? Makes me think of that. I have not read it but it sounds like a good example of those cases you are referring to here.
How dare baby Tatum arrive in the world "like, 1 or 2 weeks before the due date" when Khloe had, like, other plans! Gosh, is he going to inconvenience her like this for the next 18 years?! I guess we just say the selfish parts out loud now...
Heart-wrenching stuff. Thank you for exposing the underbelly of these industries.
Gosh I know, what a selfish loser baby. (Jokes, jokes!). “Saying the selfish parts out loud”-very interesting thing to think on really. I think people are addicted to public vulnerability in a way because it gets them attention via playing into other people’s similar negative qualities, which to be honest I can understand to a point, I have written several very vulnerable things myself in a bid to find some sort of connection as well, but I think we have to be tactful and responsible about those shares-which that interview really is either of those things especially considering that child will be able to access those words one day. Either way, thank you for reading and sharing!
I agree; there's a thin line between humility/ relatability and encouraging negative human traits to flourish. Unfortunately for celebrities with large numbers of followers, I think they often aim for the former but veer closer to the latter.
Just like all your amazing work, this piece left me feeling such a conflicting mix of emotions - heartbroken by where we are right now, yet empowered with a feminine rage. As a mama to my eighteen month old daughter, I have never felt more connected to my body and womanhood since pregnancy and her birth. After years of denying and resenting my femininity, I now fiercely want to defend not just my own, but every female. I can't bear the thought of my daughter growing up with these messages. How can I ensure she remains connected to herself, her body, her soul? The answer still eludes me as I continue to navigate this journey for myself. Thank you for putting into words what I, and I think many women today, struggle to articulate, and for giving so much to reflect on.
Heartbroken yet empowered by rage is sort of the planet I inhabit, feeling seen by you! We must temper it with sweetness and optimism but these qualities allow for clarity and motivation I think-essential things. I appreciate your instinct to protect us all, and I see my own feelings reflected in that. The question you ask here about your daughter is one I seriously grapple with, having two daughters myself, one on the cusp of her teen years. The answers are elusive I’m afraid, and yet here we are, contemplating them! I think and hope that that is what truly matters-we are trying, we are paying attention.
As always this was such a powerful piece written by you! So many sections I kept reading over and over again because it was speaking to me in such a real way! Thank you for putting so clearly and succinctly into words what so many of us feel. This piece made me realize that surrogacy is the absolute worst manifestation of capitalism and the darker side of human nature. I feel deeply for the women who yearn for motherhood, but the answer is not to buy another woman’s womb and buy a baby. It’s so wrong on so many levels and I also feel for the poor little babies who will carry trauma for the rest of their life from being separated from their mothers before they even realized that they are separate entities from said mothers. Truly heartbreaking.
It really is one of the worst ways capitalism manifests, and I would add to that individualism as well. Thank you for reading and for sharing your reflections ♥️
Thank you for writing such thought provoking pieces! I was also thinking about this some more and I think the reason so many people have no problem with surrogacy is as a society we don’t view babies as people with feelings and needs that should be valued and prioritized. How sad. Fully agree with you about the individualism as well. Thank you again for sharing your writing with us 💗
Thank you for taking the time to write this thoughtful, pretty gut-wrenching piece. The manufactured loss and the damage to the babies coming into this world through this sick farming is so heartbreaking to me. It’s really hard to look at the videos and pictures in those instagram links. It truly feels like there is a literal bifurcation occurring on the planet right now, a split into two paradigms, the organic and the inorganic ones.
Sorry to just now be replying, but your last sentence here really brought up a lot of feelings for me. That bifurcation is real and in a way, I hold hope because I see it and I see more and more people turning to the “organic” side of it, and yet it is also heartbreaking. Thank you for reading.
Preparing to give birth to my first (a daughter) in the coming weeks (days? hours?), I have so many emotions held in check. Thinking about the moment she is out and I can hold her makes me immediately tear up. The emotional power of that moment, of the moment I get to hand her to her daddy so he can finally hold her…. So much fear and hope and something deeper than any named emotion is wrapped around my anticipation of those moments. I cannot fathom handing her off to a stranger. What a grotesque, alien idea. How utterly inhuman and unloving.
There is something so visceral about late pregnancy and early postpartum that makes the truth of surrogacy and reproductive commodification so absolutely undeniable. It was in this place that I first realized the truth of it all too. I hope for a beautiful birth and a happy and healing postpartum for you in the coming days ♥️
If I had three wishes, I’d wish to never read the phrase “surro babe” again in my life. Also, I listened to a podcast a while ago (it escapes me), that said the while many surrogates claim to do so to “help” others, all the surrogates in the cited study did not crack out of the bottom 25% of income here in the U.S. Like just say you need the money instead of lying to yourself.
Ugh this is so true-and if they did so and spoke about it honestly, it would illuminate just how much this really is exploitation. Look at places where only altruistic surrogacy is legal like Canada- crickets. Also the woman I mention at the end of this piece calls her baby “belly bud” and I just want to crawl out of my skin every-time she utters it.
Yes, I’ve heard “belly buddy” before and it’s something else.
Surrogacy makes me sick to my stomach, I never gave it much thought until I became a mother, but since giving birth to my own daughters, I cannot bear to think of these infants taken from their mothers and handed over to strangers. Thankfully commercial surrogacy is still illegal in the UK, and very few women are willing to be a surrogate without being paid, but ofc there are powerful pressure groups pushing for the laws on surrogacy to be relaxed.
One of the weirdest things I’ve observed is that a lot of the pro homebirth/physiological birth crowd in the UK are also very supportive of surrogacy. So they talk all the time about supporting physiological and the connection of mother and baby, and then are totally fine with something that is THE MOST destructive of the mother baby relationship.
It was weeks after I had my second child that I listened to a multi-part podcast on surrogacy and I can’t even explain the amount of crying that happened because it hit me so hard in my early postpartum state, especially the way the whole thing impacts infants.
Interesting what you say about certain groups being supportive, I have similarly seen the home birth crowd often be very supportive of trans ideology and pronoun nonsense as well. It’s like somewhere a switch gets flipped, where “this is how things are and should be” gets bypassed via inclusivity and “shoulds” (like “you should be kind, accepting, polite” etc). Truly strange.
Wow, that’s a wild contrast in the UK. Ugh. Just thinking about it makes me ill.
Even the NJ Supreme Court case over Baby M (mentioned in the part about Michigan's history with surrogacy) acknowledged this disparity - and it was one of the first higher court cases touching on the issue: "Intimated, but disputed, is the assertion that surrogacy will be used for the benefit of the rich at the expense of the poor...Nevertheless it is clear to us that it is unlikely that surrogate mothers will be as proportionately numerous among those women in the top twenty percent income bracket as among those in the bottom twenty percent. Put differently, we doubt that infertile couples in the low-income bracket will find upper income surrogates..." (From In Re Baby M, Supreme Court of New Jersey, 1988).
Well that quote spells it out starkly and perfectly. Thank you. I need to read that whole case briefing.
I had to read it a few years ago for a Law and Bioethics class, and that specific point always comes back to me when people try to make a case for surrogacy as some sort of egalitarian, women-helping-women arrangement. The entire decision reads very well as an anti-surrogacy treatise, even though it wasn't even addressing gestational surrogacy at the time, but unfortunately the warnings went unheeded. Subsequent court decisions regarding surrogacy and third-party reproduction are less forthright about the ills that come along with an industry like this, and much harder to read without alarm bells going off the whole time.
I will have to download it. Have you seen that new-ish feminist book “Full Surrogacy Now”? Makes me think of that. I have not read it but it sounds like a good example of those cases you are referring to here.
I hadn't heard of it but I just googled it and, man, it looks like a doozy
I know, I’m sort of tempted to hate read it but don’t have the time 😂
Right. You’ll never find a low-income family paying a gated community surrogate. It’s polite exploitation.
How dare baby Tatum arrive in the world "like, 1 or 2 weeks before the due date" when Khloe had, like, other plans! Gosh, is he going to inconvenience her like this for the next 18 years?! I guess we just say the selfish parts out loud now...
Heart-wrenching stuff. Thank you for exposing the underbelly of these industries.
Gosh I know, what a selfish loser baby. (Jokes, jokes!). “Saying the selfish parts out loud”-very interesting thing to think on really. I think people are addicted to public vulnerability in a way because it gets them attention via playing into other people’s similar negative qualities, which to be honest I can understand to a point, I have written several very vulnerable things myself in a bid to find some sort of connection as well, but I think we have to be tactful and responsible about those shares-which that interview really is either of those things especially considering that child will be able to access those words one day. Either way, thank you for reading and sharing!
I agree; there's a thin line between humility/ relatability and encouraging negative human traits to flourish. Unfortunately for celebrities with large numbers of followers, I think they often aim for the former but veer closer to the latter.
Just like all your amazing work, this piece left me feeling such a conflicting mix of emotions - heartbroken by where we are right now, yet empowered with a feminine rage. As a mama to my eighteen month old daughter, I have never felt more connected to my body and womanhood since pregnancy and her birth. After years of denying and resenting my femininity, I now fiercely want to defend not just my own, but every female. I can't bear the thought of my daughter growing up with these messages. How can I ensure she remains connected to herself, her body, her soul? The answer still eludes me as I continue to navigate this journey for myself. Thank you for putting into words what I, and I think many women today, struggle to articulate, and for giving so much to reflect on.
Heartbroken yet empowered by rage is sort of the planet I inhabit, feeling seen by you! We must temper it with sweetness and optimism but these qualities allow for clarity and motivation I think-essential things. I appreciate your instinct to protect us all, and I see my own feelings reflected in that. The question you ask here about your daughter is one I seriously grapple with, having two daughters myself, one on the cusp of her teen years. The answers are elusive I’m afraid, and yet here we are, contemplating them! I think and hope that that is what truly matters-we are trying, we are paying attention.
As always this was such a powerful piece written by you! So many sections I kept reading over and over again because it was speaking to me in such a real way! Thank you for putting so clearly and succinctly into words what so many of us feel. This piece made me realize that surrogacy is the absolute worst manifestation of capitalism and the darker side of human nature. I feel deeply for the women who yearn for motherhood, but the answer is not to buy another woman’s womb and buy a baby. It’s so wrong on so many levels and I also feel for the poor little babies who will carry trauma for the rest of their life from being separated from their mothers before they even realized that they are separate entities from said mothers. Truly heartbreaking.
It really is one of the worst ways capitalism manifests, and I would add to that individualism as well. Thank you for reading and for sharing your reflections ♥️
Thank you for writing such thought provoking pieces! I was also thinking about this some more and I think the reason so many people have no problem with surrogacy is as a society we don’t view babies as people with feelings and needs that should be valued and prioritized. How sad. Fully agree with you about the individualism as well. Thank you again for sharing your writing with us 💗
Thank you for taking the time to write this thoughtful, pretty gut-wrenching piece. The manufactured loss and the damage to the babies coming into this world through this sick farming is so heartbreaking to me. It’s really hard to look at the videos and pictures in those instagram links. It truly feels like there is a literal bifurcation occurring on the planet right now, a split into two paradigms, the organic and the inorganic ones.
Sorry to just now be replying, but your last sentence here really brought up a lot of feelings for me. That bifurcation is real and in a way, I hold hope because I see it and I see more and more people turning to the “organic” side of it, and yet it is also heartbreaking. Thank you for reading.
the reduction of human relations to economic transactions between the homos economicii of the liberal imaginary
https://stanleyabner1951gmailcom.substack.com/p/sex-work
Will read this later!
Stan, that was excellent. Have archived it as I'll need to go back and back.
Wondering if you might write a piece about Only Fans? Tks
Preparing to give birth to my first (a daughter) in the coming weeks (days? hours?), I have so many emotions held in check. Thinking about the moment she is out and I can hold her makes me immediately tear up. The emotional power of that moment, of the moment I get to hand her to her daddy so he can finally hold her…. So much fear and hope and something deeper than any named emotion is wrapped around my anticipation of those moments. I cannot fathom handing her off to a stranger. What a grotesque, alien idea. How utterly inhuman and unloving.
There is something so visceral about late pregnancy and early postpartum that makes the truth of surrogacy and reproductive commodification so absolutely undeniable. It was in this place that I first realized the truth of it all too. I hope for a beautiful birth and a happy and healing postpartum for you in the coming days ♥️
Great piece, Emily💞 This is a hard topic and you’re telling the truth with love and grace
Thank you so much Amber!