Scripps News Detroit recently reported on Michigan’s “strict laws” surrounding surrogacy. The state (as well as two others) prohibits paid surrogacy, in which the woman who is carrying the child receives monetary compensation for the use of her body. Michigan allows surrogacy as long as the surrogates are not paid.
Despite the law, Scripps News reported that at least one Michigan couple has managed to get around it: Alex and Alan Kamer. The couple said pregnancy is not an option for them because Alex has a complex congenital heart defect. So, they decided to use a surrogate to have their children but were disappointed when they learned about the Michigan law.
“We were definitely surprised and frustrated,” said Alex.
They were ultimately able to use a surrogate from out of state, which increased the cost of surrogacy because it added travel expenses to the price they were already paying for the surrogate, legal fees, and medical costs. The couple said they spent an additional $40,000 to use an out-of-state surrogate.
It is unclear how much the surrogate was paid, but according to NBC, surrogate fees range from $30,000 to $60,000. This includes medical testing and screenings for the surrogate and the carrying and delivering of the child. If she becomes pregnant with more than one baby, her fee can increase. Her fee can also increase due to her location, which was the case for the Kamers.
“I was so shocked,” said Alex. “I felt so dehumanized and I felt so little.”
Exploitation
It is not inhumane for a state to prohibit the rented use of another person’s body.
Even if the person consents to their body being used to benefit someone else, she often does so out of a desire to increase her income. Rich women are not signing up to be surrogates for disadvantaged women; it’s the exact opposite.
As previously reported by Live Action News author Cassy Fiano-Chesser, the women choosing to become surrogates are not typically wealthy, but are looking to better their financial situation through an act that is largely seen as self-sacrificing and generous. But their wealthy clients often treat these women and their bodies as property, and have even at times forced their surrogates to abort if the child receives a diagnosis in the womb, if the child is the ‘wrong‘ gender, or if the woman becomes pregnant with ‘too many‘ children.
Former ‘NSYNC member Lance Bass once spoke about the surrogates he has used as if they were less than human and more like an improperly-functioning appliance. “Some just wouldn’t produce enough eggs,” he complained. He added, “Not only did we need to get a new egg donor now because we found out she had early lupus, but on top of that, when we did our egg retrieval, we only had two healthy embryos. Normally, the number’s much higher. So we put both in and once she miscarried, we had to start all over from scratch again this past year.”
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA – MAY 31: (L-R) Lance Bass and Michael Turchin attend the Los Angeles premiere of Freeform’s “Cruel Summer” season 2 at Grace E. Simons Lodge on May 31, 2023 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Rodin Eckenroth/FilmMagic)
This attitude signifies that in Bass’s mind, these women failed to do their jobs, for which he was paying a large amount of money. He needed the eggs of one woman and the uterus of another woman to do jobs that neither he nor his husband could do, and he expected that they do it.
Treating women like products and using their bodies to get what you want is exploitation. One woman, who was not paid to be a surrogate, still felt used. She said, “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.’” She added, “I was used for my uterus, and then discarded when I was no longer needed. It was the most degrading and horrific experience.”
She is now against all forms of surrogacy and believes it should all be “unlawful.”
Dehumanization
Telling wealthy adults that they cannot pay an underprivileged woman to be their surrogate is not “dehumanizing.” It’s a validation of the surrogate’s inherent value as a human being. Michigan law (for now) states that women’s bodies cannot be rented or sold.
When it comes to surrogacy, it is also children who suffer dehumanization. Human embryos are typically created in abundance — Paris Hilton boasted of having “20 boys” — and then graded for their “quality.” Countless embryos are destroyed for not making the cut. Preimplantation genetic diagnosis, which typically costs extra, allows couples to test the embryos for health conditions. Any who are not deemed ‘healthy’ can be destroyed. Couples also can choose a boy over a girl or vice versa.
BEVERLY HILLS, CALIFORNIA – FEBRUARY 04: (FOR EDITORIAL USE ONLY) Paris Hilton attends the Pre-GRAMMY Gala & GRAMMY Salute to Industry Icons Honoring Julie Greenwald & Craig Kallman at The Beverly Hilton on February 04, 2023 in Beverly Hills, California. (Photo by Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic)
When a surrogate is implanted with multiple embryos and becomes pregnant with multiple babies, the intended parents may be legally allowed to ask her to undergo a selective reduction in which one or more of the “extra” babies — who were once desperately wanted by their parents — are killed in the womb.
These children are treated like items on a shelf in which parents pick and choose which babies stay on the shelf (frozen for an unknown amount of time), which babies are broken and should be destroyed, and which babies have the ‘right’ qualities.
In addition, studies have shown that taking babies from their birth mother — whether she is biologically related to them or not — causes immense trauma for the baby and can permanently alter a child’s adult brain function later in life. This is the case even with adoption, which seeks to give a child a family when that child is unable to be raised by his or her birth mother. Surrogacy, on the other hand, deliberately creates a child knowing he or she will lose the birth mother, with a child typically removed from the birth mother’s life immediately after delivery. This was the plan from before the child was conceived: to remove her from the only mother she’s ever known. Surrogacy creates trauma because it has the goal of separating a baby from her parent(s).
Michigan is one of three states that prohibits the paid use of women’s bodies for surrogacy, including Louisiana and Nebraska. Several countries have done the same.
Pope Francis recently spoke out about surrogacy, calling it “deplorable” and saying it is “based on the exploitation of situations of the mother’s material needs.”
“A child is always a gift and never the basis of a commercial contract,” he said. “Consequently, I express my hope for an effort by the international community to prohibit this practice universally.”
