Considering how quickly “too posh to push” once took off as a way of rebuking mothers who planned to cheat nature with a C-section, current reporting about affluent women who, for reasons seemingly unconnected to fertility, outsource entire pregnancies to poorer women is distinguished by a touching delicacy.
So much so that a whole new vocabulary – “welcomed”, “surrogacy journey”, “gestational carrier” – is now helping normalise these womb-saving conveniences. You would hardly know from the tributes to celebrity hirers of surrogates, customarily accompanied by zero interest in the labouring women’s journeys, that commercial surrogacy is banned in most of the world, and only occurs within the UK in its expenses-only form. And some will certainly take it as a sign of progress that, even as studies expose the long-term health problems associated with childbirth, no reason now seems too trivial to justify paying a less fortunate woman to risk these complications.
Who are strangers to comment on a would-be parent exercising what is increasingly claimed, even if it requires the bodies of others, to be a right? Or on the choices of a surrogate mother, also assumed to be a free agent? It remains a mystery why the choice to gestate a stranger’s child is almost never, if ever, taken by the richest 1%.
While the essential service is unchanged, give or take the egg provider, since the sensational arrival of baby Cotton in 1985, the impact of celebrity customers, commercial agencies and proselytisers for fertility equality means a buyer like, say, the heiress Paris Hilton, can now feel confident her various reasons for womb-rental, including teenage trauma, are unlikely to be seriously interrogated. For instance, recently: “My life has been so public.” With this explanation, even women’s magazines notionally alert to the physical and mental risks of reproductive labour appear fully satisfied. Two babies acquired within the last year have been displayed.
“The surrogacy process,” Hilton said, “was definitely a difficult decision to make.” If anything, you gather, it’s Hilton’s wellbeing, not that of her child-bearers that should concern us. She would have loved, she said, “that experience of growing the baby in your tummy and feeling the kicks and all of those exciting moments”.
Spare a thought, too, for fellow customer Khloé Kardashian, who used a surrogate to avoid, it was reported, a second child putting her body “under more strain”. She has spoken about the “transactional” difficulties of the transaction, feelings of guilt and of struggling to bond with her son. “I wish someone was honest about surrogacy and the difference of it,” she said.
To be fair, there have been a few attempts, over the years. In fact, while principled objections relating to commodification, to coercion, to alienation from self (for the birth mother), to surrogacy’s shared characteristics with the sale of organs, may have escaped some clients, it would surely be quite difficult to remain ignorant about the entire, international horror story. And if not ignorant, untroubled. Along with occasional scandals, such as the leaving behind in Thailand by the buyers (the father a sex offender) of baby Gammy, a twin born with Down’s syndrome (the other was acceptable), researchers have exposed exploitation, trafficking, grim housing and dehumanising treatment of surrogate mothers leading, in one country after another, to the trade’s prohibition. The UN special rapporteur, Maud de Boer-Buquicchio, rejecting the idea of any right to a child, has identified most commercial surrogacy as the sale of children.
But some countries hold out. With the US so costly, Ukraine was particularly favoured until the collision of war with reproductive tourism separated surrogate mothers from their own children and families. To save foreign clients’ pregnancies, some host women were removed by agencies to neighbouring countries. Kenya is among the countries stepping up, although buyers have been warned about, among other things, maternal death rates and the use of hostels.
Closer to home, some parents via surrogacy have also helped clarify how shopping for the perfect eggs and gestators can differ not only from unassisted parenthood, but from anything formerly understood as human dignity. A couple of Made in Chelsea alumni recently treated themselves to something special: “There’s a company in LA and they have a company that basically is, supermodels who are like Ivy League educated,” one explained.
In the Guardian, a revelatory article about a Ukrainian arrangement, published last week, confirmed that surrogacy does not need to be similarly crass and distasteful to seem nonetheless, utterly unimaginable. The very nice-sounding Dorothy and Charlie, although they could not have foreseen a catastrophe that would end with them living on intimate terms with their baby’s Ukrainian surrogate mother and her son, would have presumably been aware, as buyers, the transaction was asymmetrical. They knew – Dorothy has a grown-up child – what they were asking for their initial £43,000 outlay, a sum that is, you might think, a fairly reasonable price for a human. You can hardly welcome a BMW for that. Even before new figures on the number of women – 40 million annually – who experience lasting health issues from childbirth, anyone interested would know the risks, increased in multiple births. Surrogate mothers have heightened levels of depression, with secrecy and the avoidance of stigma likely, in some cases, to stand in the way of treatment.
That endless evidence of exploitation and harm seems never to discourage pro-surrogacy campaigners was again demonstrated last week, when Irish ministers approved what is likely to become regulated international surrogacy. Fine Gael senator Mary Seery Kearney (whose child was born by surrogacy in India before it prohibited the trade) says the change would bring “much needed certainty and legal protection to intended parents and children”. If the past is any guide it would also increase the risk of gestational slavery in poorer parts of the world. You wonder what, other than deterrent costs, would ever strike the determined womb-renter as too high a price to pay.
• Catherine Bennett is an Observer columnist
