As Alsalem reported, the global surrogacy market is booming. It was valued at $14.4 bn in 2023 and is expected to rise to $96.6 bn by 2033. However, as little as 10 per cent of the “profits” go to mothers who bear the physical and emotional risks of surrogacy, the report found, while intermediaries line their pockets. Mothers experience physical and psychological harm and feel dehumanized as they are referred to as “ovens” and “gestational carriers” while the resulting children are commodified and sold.
Julie Bindel reports on 14 October that a 72-year-old Scotsman has just been recognized as the owner of an American baby he bought back in 2020. She gave some examples of abuse in existing contracts:
“If Gestational Carrier suffers a loss of her uterus as a result of the performance of her obligations under this Agreement, she shall receive $5,000.00 from Intended Parents”, stipulates one contract. So a woman’s uterus is only worth $5,000. They pay a lot more than that for a child which can only come from a woman’s uterus!
It continues: “If Intended Parents jointly request Gestational Carrier to terminate the pregnancy because of the Child’s medical condition(s), she will do so promptly. If Gestational Carrier refuses to terminate, Gestational Carrier will have materially breached this Agreement and Intended Parents’ obligations under this Agreement shall cease immediately”.
Bindel quoted a UK victim: “It’s painted as a wonderful thing to do, a beautiful selfless act which can only bring joy when for me, I felt used, manipulated, and devastated.” A spokesperson for Surrogacy Concern says cases involving “coercion and regret” are not uncommon, even within the UK’s surrogacy model. “Surrogacy prioritises the wants of the adults ahead of the needs of the child, and creates a societal sense of entitlement towards women’s bodies,” she said.
In March last year, experts from 75 countries signed the Casablanca Declaration, that calls for a global ban on all forms of surrogacy. In April this year, an international conference was held in Rome with an aim to provide all States with a legal instrument banning the practice of surrogate motherhood.
Alsalem asked for an international ban on “reproductive tourism” where wealthy customers travel to use poor women to produce a child for them. White couples using Black women is not unusual and I hardly need to remind any of us of that relation to slavery. There is no human right to have a child. Research is emerging about the harm to the children as well as the mother. Alsalem gives many examples from around the world. I want to give you just one here in the U.S.
More than a dozen big tech companies provide five-figure subsidies to any employee who needs or wants to outsource gestational labor. This sounds astounding when many Americans don’t even have health insurance. Compared to natural conception, carrying a genetically unrelated fetus more than triples the risk of severe, potentially deadly conditions, a statistic surrogates are rarely given. The U.S. already has a shockingly high maternal mortality rate especially for a rich nation. So to be realistic, the subsidy should go to the mother not the purchaser.
But the mother is under another threat as well. The increasing acceptance of “fetal personhood” means that, in many states, losing a pregnancy can be charged as a felony and potentially punished with life in prison. So if the surrogate loses the baby, which happens in 20% of normal pregnancies, she could go to prison for life.
A venture capitalist hired a woman to have a male baby for her in 2023. The purchaser got a court order to keep the mother quiet about it. The purchaser violated the contract by posting information on the mother online. No repercussions were available for her breach and the mother did not want to anger her and start out with a bad relationship.
A 34-year-old bank officer and former athletic agreed to do it in what she thought was an altruistic act. Surrogacy is illegal in her state, but she went ahead anyhow calling the payment reimbursement. When the mother changed her job, the purchaser was worried that the new insurance company would not cover expenses and the purchaser would have to spend more money.
At 26 weeks, the mother began to have leaking. The Emergency Room doctors told her it was nothing. At 29 weeks, the water broke, and she spent the rest of the time in this pregnancy in the hospital away from her own son. Then the purchaser started accusing the mother of breaching the contract by changing jobs. The imbalance of power shows immediately. When the purchaser breached by publishing personal information, there was nothing to do about it. If the mother breached, she would have to pay for the birth AND still go through with it and give the baby to the purchaser.
The purchaser than started getting paranoid about the size and health of the baby. One morning the fetus had no electrical cell pulse. The placenta had separated and deprived the fetus of oxygen. The doctor confirmed nothing untoward had happened. But the mother spent hours in what was a dangerous situation and dangerous surgery. According to court records the mother nearly died due to loss of blood.
The purchaser did not care and refused to speak to the birth mother. Then she began to blame the mother and attack her. The purchaser made ridiculous accusations based on delusions. The purchaser believes she knew better than the doctors and could have saved the baby if she had been asked. The purchaser called the FBI repeatedly, and reported the mother, the agency, and the hospital to more than 12 agencies. She was on lithium for bipolar disorder but of course the mother did not know that. Though the mother’s medical information was known to the purchaser, the purchaser’s medical information was not known to the mother. It was also not disclosed that the purchaser who donated the egg and the sperm donor both had placental issues in their family history.
After the water broke, the mother continued to bleed and could not go back to work. The agency who brokered this sale stopped paying, therefore leaving the mother with bills. When she went back to work, the purchaser harassed principals at her job and claimed the mother was defrauding them. The purchaser posted messages from her “son” in heaven, she doxxed the mother, and her supporters are asking for the mother to be jailed and lose her own son.
The mother had to take security actions, move, change jobs, and yet the purchaser chased her down to continue the harassment. Though the “contract” called for arbitration, the purchaser sued in court. When it was rejected, she appealed. She sought to get all the mother’s medical records, but the court threw that out. The purchaser claims the mother kidnapped and killed her son. Yet now she wants a surrogacy start up where the mothers are like uber drivers or warehouse workers.
The purchaser did get a baby girl from another surrogate though that woman also had medical problems and nearly died from blood loss. A 2024 survey found that naturally conceived pregnancies carry a 2% risk of several negative medical outcomes. A surrogate pregnancy increases that to almost 8%. No one tells the mothers this.
The mother now has hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical bills and her insurance company stopped paying when the purchaser claimed fraud. The purchaser has also leveled criminal charges against the mother.
The mother got a restraining order against the purchaser and there is an arrest warrant for the doxxing. But the purchaser who had claimed an 8-figure salary refuses to pay her attorney. Does this sound like someone else you know of?
This woman who thought she was doing a positive act, is now embroiled in what will no doubt be a lifetime of debt not to mention the attacks and harassment from a mentally unstable wealthy woman who is throwing a childish fit because she didn’t get what she wanted. The harms of surrogacy are deep and wide from health concerns for the mother, mental health concerns for the child, gross abuse of the imbalance of power, the commodification of women’s bodies, and the denigration of children who are sold and trafficked after being born for sale. It needs to stop.