In the New York Times Magazine this week, Alex Kucynski writes about the experience of hiring a woman to give birth to a child that is the product of Kucynski’s egg and her husband’s sperm. This is not one of the surrogate children that is part of a surrogate’s DNA, or a “traditional surrogate” which brings visions of a distraught postpartum woman running out of the delivery ward with “her” baby in tow, but a gestational surrogacy–a “womb rental.”
What is interesting about this story, curiously, is not the actual experience of it. In fact, Kucynski tells the story so glibly and flippantly that it reads as a puff piece in a glossy women’s mag, so there is very little chance to really understand the agony that the infertile experience, or to really feel the proclaimed connection between the mother and the surrogate. There is no medical emergency moment, no moment of self-doubt or doubt in the surrogate. (This is a good thing, of course. I am just trying to point out that the story has no real compelling drama in its own right.)
What comes shining through loud and clear in the article is the class issues surrounding surrogacy and, in particular, the utter lack of self-awareness Kucynski seems to possess.
Kucynski paid for 11 uninsured rounds of I.V.F. before turning to gestational surrogacy, a sum totaling about $132,000. The average yearly salary for a gestational surrogate is $50,000. The article tells us that they do not accept poor women in this program because it would be too much like coercion.
None were living in poverty. Lawyers and surrogacy advocates will tell you that they don’t accept poor women as surrogates for a number of reasons. Shirley Zager told me that the arrangement might feel coercive for someone living in real poverty. Poor women, she also told me, are less likely to be in stable relationships, in good health and of appropriate weight. Surrogates are often required to have their own health insurance, which usually means the surrogate or her spouse is employed in the kind of secure job that provides such a benefit.
I wonder, though, if a woman was living in poverty but met the criteria, healthwise, and had insurance, why not take one of these women on as a surrogate. Of course, generally members of the lower middle class can use the buffer to create savings or put older children through college, as the surrogate in this piece was using her money for, but why not help the impoverished?
We encountered the wink-nod rule: Surrogates would never say they were motivated to carry a child for another couple just for money; they were all motivated by altruism. This gentle hypocrisy allows surrogacy to take place. Without it, both sides would have to acknowledge the deep cultural revulsion against attaching a dollar figure to the creation of a human life.
Ah, I see. We have to pretend this isn’t about the money. We need to rent the wombs of the moderately desperate, rather than the extremely desperate.
Further, the surrogate, who would grow and nourish the child but not actually contribute any DNA, must have a computer and know how to use it. The wilds of the internet is proof of the fact that computer ownership results in a better class of citizen, right?
When we came across Cathy’s application, we saw that she was by far the most coherent and intelligent of the group. She wrote that she was happily married with three children. Her answers were not handwritten in the tiny allotted spaces; she had downloaded the original questionnaire and typed her responses at thoughtful length. Her attention to detail was heartening. And her computer-generated essay indicated, among other things, a certain level of competence. This gleaned morsel of information made me glad: she must live in a house with a computer and know how to use it.
Finally, the smug “look what I got away with” tone at the end of the post is nausea-inducing, to say the least. Kucynski frames these quotes with a “my, my, look what other people said to me” pretense, but it comes across as completely self-congratulatory.
One announced to a table of people at a dinner party: “My God, Alex. You’ve really gotten away with some stuff in your life. But this takes the cake!” It was as if I had performed some slimy trick and was still able to have my ticket stamped “Mother.” Not only Mother, but Biological Mother.
Did these women have such terrible pregnancies? Did they all resent their big babies? Was not birthing a baby but still having a biological child really “taking the cake”?
What really takes the cake is the pictures accompanying the article.
Audrey Hepburn meets Jane Six-pack? Also be sure to check out the other photos with the article–the surrogate, barefoot and pregnant, and the author at home on her perfect lawn with her baby nurse. I liked what Nina Shen Rastogi said about this piece on Slate. The title says it all: She Rented a Woman’s Womb and Then Was Rude to the Landlady.
(Posted by SJ)
