Surrogacy and Inequality
Dana Goldstein commented on the first person account of Alex Kucynski’s outsources pregnancy in the most recent New York Times Magazine:
Yet there’s no mistaking that Hilling and Kuczynski come from vastly different worlds. Hilling is small town America to Kuczynski’s Manhattan; she is pink fleece to Kuczynski’s little black dress. The divide between them is brought home by an accompanying photo of Kuczynski standing in the yard of her lavish colonial in Southampton, New York, holding her son. Behind her, standing at attention and wearing a uniform, is Margo Clements, whom the caption tells us is Kuczynski’s “baby nurse.”
Hilling, I’m sure, had no baby nurse to help raise her three kids. And while, at least according to Kuczynski’s narrative, Hilling enters into surrogacy cheerfully, happy to help an infertile couple, it’s hard to miss the underside to this story. Inequality and trouble paying for basics — like a college education — push some women to carry other women’s pregnancies. Unless this inequality is addressed, bearing wealthy women’s children (and the children of wealthy gay couples) will become some of the most financially rewarding work available to low and middle-income women, further cementing their identity as primarily reproductive. I believe surrogacy should be regulated and legal. But I don’t want to live in a country where women turn to surrogacy in order to pay their own children’s college bills.
It seems to me that the issue in this realm to really keep one’s eye on is the international domain. Even very rapid economic growth in, say, India will still leave it the case that there are hundreds of millions of Indian women who are dramatically poorer than well-off first-world women for quite some time yet. Kuczynski paid Hilling $25,000 for carrying her fetus which is a decent chunk of change in the United States but over six times per capita GDP in India. And there’s just no realistic prospect for closing these kind of global wealth gaps on a rapid time frame. When you think about the kind of difficulties that Mexicans are often willing to endure for a shot at low-wage, unpleasant jobs in the US service economy then I think you have to assume that there could be a lot of people who’d be eager to make thousands of dollars carrying another couple’s fetus if there were a regularized, legal way to do so.
45 Responses to “Surrogacy and Inequality”
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December 2nd, 2008 at 5:28 pm
Same with the sale of kidneys, sex work, etc, indeed, with wage labor generally. The question of what can been commodified & on what terms is in principle perfectly general, but given the international dimension of economic inequality, it plays itself out largely as a problem of globalization. Given the absence of democratic mechanisms for the resolution of international political questions, this presumably has implications for the kinds of settlements that are arrived at.
December 2nd, 2008 at 5:29 pm
No, there are too many infectious diseases in India to make it a popular place for rich Americans to have their babies gestated. And who wants their baby carried by a woman who may have been malnourished at some point in her life.
A flat-broke Iceland, however, might well want to get into that market. No tropical disease, just about the longest lifespans on earth, big Scandinavian girls, lots of food, and no money makes it sound ideal.
December 2nd, 2008 at 5:32 pm
So, one person is rich and the other is poor, relatively speaking. If the rich person pays the poor person $25,000 to carry her baby, doesn’t that reduce inequality? It certainly makes those people marginally more equal.
December 2nd, 2008 at 5:35 pm
But I don’t want to live in a country where women turn to surrogacy in order to pay their own children’s college bills.
Why the hell not? We already live in a world where people turn to all sorts of unpleasant physical labor to pay for food, shelter, and hteir children’s college bills. People in the nursing professions turn to changing old people’s diapers. Maybe you have some conception of motherhood that makes surrogacy different from other types of services performed for money. Fine, don’t be a surrogate. Women who don’t feel that way should be perfectly free to make money by carrying other people’s kids.
December 2nd, 2008 at 5:39 pm
See the first comment, from me, here. It’s a good thing it’s taken me so long to writing that, now I have the chance to work MattY into it to.
P.S. Has MattY applied for the SaveSomalia grant yet? A mysterious billionaire is offering a $350,000 grant to even minor pundits who’ll agree to go live in Somalia for the next decade. As a condition, they’ll have to concentrate on solving that country’s problems and won’t be allowed to pundit on U.S. issues. There’s also a small, upfront transfer fee in order to receive the grant, and the grant has to be claimed in Somalia itself. But, I’m sure MattY won’t find that an obstacle.
December 2nd, 2008 at 5:41 pm
The point is to have a baby that is as white as both kind-of-mother and dad. So the Third World surrogacy is out.
December 2nd, 2008 at 5:43 pm
Re: We already live in a world where people turn to all sorts of unpleasant physical labor to pay for food, shelter, and hteir children’s college bills.
And you think that’s a good thing, do you? The correct way to look at it is quite the contrary. It’s fundamentally wrong to carry out a surrogacy contract, for the same reason that it’s wrong to solicit a prostitute. Other forms of economic contracts are wrong inasmuch as they resemble surrogacy or prostitution, and in particular, capitalism is fundamentally morally unhealthy inasmuch as it severs the natural connection between work and reward.
You simply assert people should be free to make money however they want if their values don’t prohibit it- and you appear to suggest that their values are deserving of equal respect to the values of people who believe in natural law. My question is, why? Freedom isn’t the highest good, not by a long shot- freedom is good inasmuch as it facilitates other things which are actually good, such as virtue. And the idea that each person’s opinion is of equal value is, frankly, insane.
December 2nd, 2008 at 5:44 pm
P.S. Has MattY applied for the SaveSomalia grant yet? A mysterious billionaire is offering a $350,000 grant to even minor pundits who’ll agree to go live in Somalia for the next decade. As a condition, they’ll have to concentrate on solving that country’s problems and won’t be allowed to pundit on U.S. issues. There’s also a small, upfront transfer fee in order to receive the grant, and the grant has to be claimed in Somalia itself. But, I’m sure MattY won’t find that an obstacle.
This is so transparent it has to be a joke, right?
December 2nd, 2008 at 5:45 pm
Steve Sailer is right, though. You’d have to be an idiot to pick some poor Indian woman to be a surrogate for your child.
December 2nd, 2008 at 5:45 pm
It’s fundamentally wrong to carry out a surrogacy contract, for the same reason that it’s wrong to solicit a prostitute.
I would have thought most people would see the reasoning here as fairly different.
December 2nd, 2008 at 5:59 pm
Hector,
You simply assert people should be free to make money however they want if their values don’t prohibit it…
I don’t mean to take what you say out of context but your argument is quite condescending. If you hate capitalism or want to make life better for these people who have to make tough choices then fine but to deny two people the right to make their lives better because you find it morally wrong is incredibly selfish. I imagine you oppose globalization and low-labour costs in developing countries for similar reasons. It is not that I like the idea of surrogacy, prostitution, and cheap labour it is just that when compared with the alternatives (i.e. outlawing these practices) they are much better for all parties involved.
December 2nd, 2008 at 6:01 pm
Surrogacy and prostitution both beg the same question: why is it illegal to sell what it is perfectly legal to give away.
And Hector, you’re a smart guy buy you thinking gives of a very scary Pol Pot, vibe….
December 2nd, 2008 at 6:02 pm
No, Hector, you’re exactly wrong- “virtue” is only good inasmuch as people choose to engage in it freely.
As far as surrogacy goes- one can find it distasteful that people engage in this method for procuring offspring, especially when it would seem there are other, less potentially exploitative options like adoption. But the potential for abuse just means it should be regulated, not banned outright.
December 2nd, 2008 at 6:04 pm
This post proves that Liberals hate babies. I mean, what on earth is wrong with surrogacy. to posit this as a question of inequality is to suffer from tunnel vision. I know someone who can hardly afford this to be considering it as the only way to have biological kids.
But when that runs against Liberal “feelings” — uninformed by real world considerations — it’s wrong!
Matt and Dana give new meaning to the nanny state. or, more properly, the G-d forbid you hire a nanny state.
December 2nd, 2008 at 6:07 pm
I think we’re less likely to see an international spread of surrogacy than, say, the sex trade or the organ trade because of epigenetics. Impoverished people will rent out their wombs for less, sure, but they are also less capable of producing designer babies.
Unrelatedly, $35k a year isn’t much to live in Somalia.
December 2nd, 2008 at 6:11 pm
People keep saying Hector is smart, and yeah, he can string sentences together and he seems decently well-educated. But really, how “smart” can you be if you think working for money is exploitive? If you think that only people with “virtue” should be allowed to govern themselves?
December 2nd, 2008 at 6:14 pm
And I’ll second oljb. Hector, there’s nothing virtuous about doing “the right thing” if you don’t have any choice in the matter. It’s not virtuous to follow orders — its virtuous to freely choose virtue. That’s why the Flying Spaghetti Monster gave us free will.
December 2nd, 2008 at 6:26 pm
Also, could I have fit any more typos into my earlier post? Wow, this is what it must be like to be Matt.
December 2nd, 2008 at 6:29 pm
hector and gordon gekko going at it, and I find myself agreeing with gordon gekko. I need to go take a shower.
hector,
Sorry, dude, but while your views are generally saner than gordon gekko, your reasonings and rationale for them sometimes are actually scarier than gordon gekko’s.
December 2nd, 2008 at 6:30 pm
OLJB,
Something which is _inherently_ and _intrinsically_ wrong should be banned, not regulated, in a just and decent society.
It’s certainly true that to some degree virtue cannot be really chosen if we don’t have the option to choose otherwise. However, St. Augustine in his writings against the Donatists argues that if people are encouraged and gently pushed in the direction of virtue, then eventually these habits will become second nature and they will embrace virtue out of love, not fear. To argue that the state should never push people or encourage people in the direction of virtue seems to violate this saying. “And the master said to the slave, go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled.”
The state exists, essentially, for the purpose of trying to encourage virtue in society: a state is functioning well when its citizens love their neighbors, just as a church is doing well when its people love God. And by the way, no one is saying that all immoral actions need to be banned here, only those that are particularly vile attacks on the natural order. In my perfect society I would replace capitalism by socialist cooperatives in the main, but I wouldn’t try to replace every single hot dog stand or plumbing business. Likewise, banning surrogacy and prostitution doesn’t mean that bad parenting and sexual immorality in general should be banned, any more than banning the Nazi Party means that we should also ban Barack Obama’s mildly racist grandmother.
It’s you social liberals that want to make over every society in the image of a corrupt and decadent American liberalism. I have no problem with a world in which many different kinds of societies exist: no doubt some will embody Christian values, others Hindu or Islamic value, some will be socialist, some cooperativist, some will have Chestertonian distributism. It’s liberalism which wants to do away with the idea of the state enforcing any values at all, which ultimately means dissolving all national and local identities into a cosmopolitan soup/
December 2nd, 2008 at 6:41 pm
“It’s liberalism which wants to do away with the idea of the state enforcing any values at all, which ultimately means dissolving all national and local identities into a cosmopolitan soup”
You say that like it’s a bad thing, Hector.
I’m personally a secular social liberal, as you surmise. I have a cousin who is a staunch Christian who shares more of your worldview concerning the role of the state. He lives in a family where he exercises dominion over his wife in a Biblical manner. I live unmarried with my girlfriend in as close an approximation of inter-gender equality as possible, directly rejecting most traditional precedents in US culture and elsewhere.
But the biggest difference between my cousin and myself is that I want a society where he and I can both live the way we want, and he wants a society where everyone, including me, lives like him. It seems like that’s what you want, too, Hector. Am I correct?
December 2nd, 2008 at 6:43 pm
“You simply assert people should be free to make money however they want if their values don’t prohibit it- and you appear to suggest that their values are deserving of equal respect to the values of people who believe in natural law. My question is, why?”
The reason why everyone’s values deserve equal respect is that there is not one set of values. The idea that YOUR version of natural law must be forced down everyone’s throat, while OTHER versions of natural law must be rejected is very much contrary to the US Constitution. And before you want to tell me what I should believe, consider how much you would like living under Sharia Law. If you aren’t happy to do that, then don’t force the Christian version of Sharia on the rest of us. In our system, freedom should always be the default position unless there is a compelling state interest indicating otherwise. In this case, I see no compelling state interest.
As for Matt’s suggestion for using surrogates from India, I’m willing to let that happen, but I’d recommend strongly against it. Malnourished mothers make bad surrogates.
December 2nd, 2008 at 6:49 pm
It’s you social liberals that want to make over every society in the image of a corrupt and decadent American liberalism. …. It’s liberalism which wants to do away with the idea of the state enforcing any values at all, which ultimately means dissolving all national and local identities into a cosmopolitan soup/
I’m sorry, but when I hear the phrase “enforcing values”, I get really, really scared. Whose values? Who gets to decide?
And what exactly is the correlation between “not enforcing any values at all” with national and local identities being dissolved? Are you saying people can’t, on their own, voluntarily maintain their own values and identities unless they are being forced by the state?
December 2nd, 2008 at 6:51 pm
Actually, that should be “who the caption tells us is Kuczynski’s ‘baby nurse.’” The pronoun is not the object of anything but rather the subject that goes with the verb “is” — who [the caption tells us] is Kuczynski’s “baby nurse.”
Not to be a grammar Nazi or anything, but that one really bugs me.
December 2nd, 2008 at 6:54 pm
As much as I hate gordon gekko’s “government is bad, everyone for himself, let’s not waste government money for unwed mothers or paid maternity leave” view of the world, it’s actually much much less scary compared to hector’s “natural law is the answer” view of the world.
hector, when gordon gekko looks significantly better than you, something is just not right, man.
December 2nd, 2008 at 6:59 pm
However, St. Augustine in his writings against the Donatists argues that if people are encouraged and gently pushed in the direction of virtue, then eventually these habits will become second nature and they will embrace virtue out of love, not fear.
Wow, an anti-secular liberal. Is their even any point responding? Secular liberals have already won this debate and most conservatives would agree. Of course if you want to go back to the days of outlawing homosexuality and interracial marriage as unvirtuous I am sure you would get a lot mor support from cultural conservatives.
December 2nd, 2008 at 7:02 pm
“Whose values? Who gets to decide?”
Obviously, Hector gets to decide. We create a new cabinet level office called the Values Nazi, and nobody else gets any input. It’ll be just like Sharia Law, with Hector as our Ayatollah. Aren’t you just thrilled about that?
December 2nd, 2008 at 8:26 pm
Is gordon gekko the same person as mixner? I don’t know why I care, I’m just mildly curious.
December 2nd, 2008 at 8:31 pm
I hesitate to say this, because it makes me sound like one of the keyboard warriors who infest the blogosphere with their blatherings about how white women should have lots of babies lest we be outbred by the Towel Heads, but there was something both absurd and annoying about Kuczynski’s saying that she was looking for a woman “with a more reliable uterus.”
December 2nd, 2008 at 11:06 pm
You know, according to nymag, AK’s husband is a billionaire hedge fund manager. So we’re not talking about marginal inequality here, we’re talking about massive inequality here, in the most literal sense. S
After reading the article, it seems clear that the gestation mother, Hilling, enjoys the work, so to speak, and so money’s being a big part of it is, somehow, less troubling. I’m all in favor of people being able to make money doing things that make them happy. AK makes very little mention of the lavishness of her lifestyle, the fact that she’s not interested in adopting at all, or all the other ways she could be spending her money. Her baby lust is all that matters. I can’t philosophically argue with AK’s obtaining a child this way; there’s no principled reason I can really take a stand on to oppose it. But if she was hoping to forestall other people’s unspoken judgements by vulnerably revealing that she’s anticipated them, she’s failed miserably. I don’t normally go around imagining the private lives of perfect strangers, but there’s something about this kind of omphaloskeptic writing which invites it. But the tale of the woman who wrote Beauty Junkies, became the fourth wife of a much older, richer father of six and could not find time to have children before the age of 36–well, it almost writes itself. Maxime Dudley is going to be given some grief when his college classmates find his NYT record.
December 2nd, 2008 at 11:26 pm
Although the subject of a subordinate clause, “whom” is the object of “mentions” so is accusative, no?
Ille is right. AK exposes herself in a way that is half defiant, half approval seeking. Constantly drops hints about her lifestyle — the house in South Hampton, money no object, obviously wealthy husband, much previously married and 20 years older. Her exhibitionism coyly stops just short of boasting. Her autonoma-like persona is devoid of interests, humanity, humor, intelligence, or warmth. A perfect emblem of the values of our era.
December 3rd, 2008 at 12:45 am
Just in case anyone thinks this is hypothetical…
I have friends who are in fact planning to hire an Indian woman as a surrogate mother, specifically because it will cost a lot less than hiring an American. Their choice surprised me. Leaving aside the ethical issues (I’m not sure where I stand on them), I would have thought that this would be very complicated legally, both from the Indian and the American side. But my friends say that in fact this has been done before, and that the legal questions all have well established answers.
December 3rd, 2008 at 1:56 am
Commenting as a busy physician/mother with many friends and colleagues unable to conceive–
One interesting problem with American feminism is the promotion of the idea that we can focus on our careers and have babies once we are settled–which usually doesn’t happen until >>30 years. Many women find that getting pregnant at this “advanced” age is not that easy. This is not a secret, but not usually discussed.
Another comment is that many young military wives are making money as surrogates and the military health care system (your tax dollars) pays for all their maternity care and delivery costs. Sort of interesting–young soldiers (often from economically disadvantaged backgrounds) are supporting the economic elite–fighting to protect oil supply etc–with their bodies, and their wives at homes are also renting their bodies for surrogacy, all paid by your taxes. (I guess I must be a progressive libertarian, since this bothers me somehow..:>)
December 3rd, 2008 at 8:27 am
$25K is cheap. I’ve had friends pay more than that for in vitro. People pay tens of thousands to adopt a chinese baby.
I really don’t understand why so many think this is immoral. My response to Hector’s “It’s fundamentally wrong to carry out a surrogacy contract” is: “Why? No one dies. No one is being pysically injured. No one is being forced to participate. It is a free country.”
The only problematic issue is that some people have a whole lot more money than others. But, no one is talking about banning that.
December 3rd, 2008 at 9:42 am
As a preliminary matter, the nurse in the picture is not standing at attention but at “parade rest” (although her feet should be apart, at least according to the Army’s drill manual from 40 years ago).
The surrogacy thing is interesting from so many angles that it is hard to pick one. The fact that so many people are willing to go to such lengths and to spend so much money to perpetuate their own personal genes is in accordance with the predictions of “Sociobiology,” or whatever they are calling it these days. But if those folks are right, why does anybody adopt instead?
December 3rd, 2008 at 9:55 am
What bothers me about the article is that AK is paying a woman to do a certain job, but considers it crass to pay money for that job. (And the people who arrange the surrogacy encourage this attitude.) AK recognizes that it’s a polite fiction that Hilling is being a surrogate out of the goodness of her heart and the $25K is just a token to cover certain incidental costs, but she acts as if she desperately wants that fiction to be true, and doesn’t seem to recognize her own desperation. She doesn’t treat Hilling with the professional and emotional boundaries that an employer should use with an employee, and doesn’t seem to even consider what boundaries in their relationship would be appropriate.
December 5th, 2008 at 8:51 pm
Bangalore : When a 24-year-old pregnant woman loses both her baby and uterus in an accident, should she be denied being a mother again? This was the question raised by Kamini Rao of Bangalore Assisted Conception Centre at a panel
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