In the season three premiere of “The Kardashians” on Hulu, sisters Kim and Khloé Kardashian discussed their experiences using surrogacy, including its difficulties, and how it affected Khloé’s bond with her son.
Both Kardashian sisters have had children using surrogates, but while the process was evidently easy for Kim, Khloé said she struggled. According to PEOPLE, it was Kim who encouraged Khloé to pursue surrogacy for her second pregnancy. “Khloé tried to get pregnant for a while,” a source told PEOPLE. “When this didn’t work out, they decided to explore other options. Kim supported and encouraged Khloé to find a surrogate.”
Khloé, however, found the surrogacy process to be “transactional” and she struggled to bond with her son after he was born. She spoke about the experience of her son’s birth last year.
“I felt really guilty that this woman just had my baby and I take the baby and go to another room and you are separated,” she said. “It felt like such a transactional experience because it is not about him. I wish someone was honest about surrogacy and the difference of it. But it doesn’t mean it is bad or good. It is just very different.”
She also noted that she became controlling with the surrogate, calling herself a “control freak.” “You’re a stranger, I just have to trust you,” she said. “I love my surrogate, she was amazing. But I’m still like, ‘I need you sitting next to me all the time. What are you doing? What are you eating?'”
It’s a mindset that has led many to criticize surrogacy as an act that gives people ownership over another person’s body.
Khloé also pointed out that it was harder for her to bond with her son, Tatum, than it was with her daughter, True — whom she carried herself. “But a surrogate process — Kim knows — is very hard for me. It’s a mindf***. It is really the weirdest thing,” Khloé said. “I do feel less connected. People do say it takes a minute to feel connected but Kim said hers was easy. This is not easy.”
Though Kim had an easier time with surrogacy, she still noted a major difference.
“I do think there is a difference when your baby is in your belly, the baby actually feels your real heart,” Kim said during their discussion. “Think about it. There’s no one else on this planet that will feel you from the inside like that, your heart.”
It has become increasingly common for people, particularly wealthy people, to turn to surrogacy when they can’t have children on their own, though social surrogacy — in which someone opts for surrogacy without having any medical reasons — is growing. Yet the process is inherently dehumanizing, with women treated akin to farm animals, meant to produce children upon demand. Meanwhile, most surrogates are low-income women, who often opt to serve as surrogates because it can net them tens of thousands of dollars — a potentially life-changing amount of money. It’s a wealthy person renting a poor person’s body to use as they see fit, including forcing the surrogate to get an abortion if the buyer feels like it.
Taslima Nasreen, a feminist and humanist activist, created headlines last year when she pointed out what it is that makes surrogacy possible.
Surrogacy is possible because there are poor women. Rich people always want the existence of poverty in the society for their own interests. If you badly need to raise a child, adopt a homeless one… I won’t accept surrogacy until rich women become surrogate mom [sic]… [people] are abusing me for my comments on surrogacy. They claim it’s my stone-age idea to not rent wombs for making babies. I suggest to adopt homeless children [and] to not exploit/invade poor women’s body. Actually its a stone-age idea by any means to reproduce babies for following traits.”
In addition, a study out of Harvard Medical School revealed that 62% of children conceived through donor technologies, including surrogacy, believe it to be unethical and immoral. They also say they feel like business transactions.
