Surrogacy is globally celebrated as a generous way to give others the gift of children, but as with IVF, the language surrounding surrogacy exposes it for what it is — the renting of a woman’s body to fulfill the wants and desires of adults with little concern for the wellbeing of the child.
A recent surrogacy story shared by Vogue highlights the dehumanization and trauma that are inherent in the use of assisted reproductive technology (ART) — and specifically, surrogacy. Author Kate Haze from the UK shared that after welcoming one child, she and her husband struggled with infertility before ultimately deciding to ‘outsource baby baking’ to a stranger on the other side of the world in the U.S.
Surrogacy is big business. According to Fortune, “[T]he cost to the prospective parents can reach over $300,000 – and surrogates themselves may be paid anywhere from about $35,000 to $100,000 for a pregnancy.” Surrogate mothers are typically lower-income women and more elite individuals pay them to carry their child for a variety of reasons.
Haze admits that surrogacy feels like “something only celebs do,” something “bougie.”
Dehumanizing language
“As I navigate a steamy 100 F fall in Dubai, where I live with my husband and our two-year-old son, I am expecting a second child in February. A second child who is currently cooking 13,000 km away in Las Vegas,” wrote Haze.
She continued, “The birth of my son in 2021 was complicated, and my baby-growing bits took a hit. Our eggs and sperm were great, but the oven had stopped working. After two years of multiple hysteroscopies, surgeries, and rounds of IVF, we were told that our best chance of having another child would be to outsource the job. […] Surrogacy was the obvious next step for us.”
After researching the surrogacy laws in different countries, they chose an agency in California because it was “known for its smooth and relatively quick process, and without the long waiting lists that exist in the UK…”
“We were sent extensive profiles of women with excellent wombs, a human version of the exclusive properties on Selling Sunset, if you will, and spent our evenings sifting through pages of detailed health histories, previous birth experiences (potential surrogates must have had at least one child of their own), and even family photos,” said Haze.
Surrogacy — and all means of ART — has turned the creation of a family into a job to be ‘outsourced’ and spurs those in the market for a baby to seek out a “smooth and relatively quick process” without long lines. Women, many of whom become surrogates to make money to care for their own families, are degraded and spoken of as if they are property or manufacturing plants being prepped to be rented based on their “excellent” condition or lack thereof. Haze said it herself when she compared them to “exclusive properties on Selling Sunset…”
But she’s certainly not the only person to speak this way about another human being whose body is being used to another person’s benefit. One surrogate explained, “I felt that they [the intended parents] believed that to some extent they ‘owned’ me and my uterus, and that they ‘deserved’ to direct the birth because they saw the babies as ‘theirs.’ I was used for my uterus, and then discarded when I was no longer needed. It was the most degrading and horrific experience.”
Children are also dehumanized in the surrogacy process, referred to as something being “cooked” and judged — even destroyed — based on their “quality.” They are treated as nothing more than items on a store shelf or a factory line.
Trauma
Haze also spoke of the difficulty intended parents can have in bonding with their baby born to a surrogate as if it were no big deal. She wrote, “… Khloé Kardashian previously admitted she initially found it difficult bonding with her son, Tatum, who was born via a surrogate in July 2023. This does, of course, worry me, but I think it’s a small price to pay for everything we’ll be gaining at the end of this wild journey.”
She also refers to the surrogate as “the person who was going to be babysitting our future child.”
Not only does this ignore the humanity of the baby in the womb — her current child, but it downplays the seriousness of the bond created between a surrogate and a baby.
Babies bond with the person carrying them throughout pregnancy. It is her voice and her scent that a baby will recognize at birth. When born, the baby will seek her out but will be ripped from her — and placed with a stranger with whom there is no bond. It isn’t just difficult for the parent to bond with the child, but for the child to bond with the parent, even if the biological connection exists.
The trauma the child suffers as a result is not “a small price.”
Research shows that taking babies from their birth mother — whether she is biologically related to them or not — causes immense trauma and can permanently alter a child’s adult brain function later in life. This is the case even with adoption, which exists to heal the wound that is created when biological parents are unable to care for her. Surrogacy, on the other hand, deliberately creates a child with the intention of separating her from her birth mother immediately after delivery. This was the plan since before the child’s conception: to remove her from the only mother she’s ever known. Surrogacy creates trauma.
