by Suzanne Moore, Telegraph
If reports Lady Gaga and Lena Dunham used surrogates are true, whether they paid or it was an act of altruism it’s still a cruel industry
In the 1990s, in a private members’ club, I met a very high-flying New York couple. They wanted children, they told me, so they were going to China to adopt a baby. Several of their circle had done the same, and the selling point, the woman told me, was that: “These kids have such great hair.”
I reeled from this idea of a small human being a fashion accessory.
Now, however, many of the rich and famous don’t bother much with the whole arduous adoption process at all. These days, many of them just pay a poorer woman surrogate to do the messy pregnancy and birth bit. And we all have to pretend that this kind of surrogacy – increasingly indulged by celebrities – is fine and dandy.
Both Lady Gaga and Lena Dunham have had new babies born through surrogates in the US. In the US, paying for that process is legal (whereas in Britain, only a surrogate’s expenses can be reimbursed). Dunham, despite now living in Britain, opted for a Brooklyn-based surrogate. The duo’s surrogates may have provided their bodies altruistically – but the fact they are both in the US suggests perhaps not.