Your body, my choice
by Georgia L Gilholy, Artillery Row:
The bodies of women and babies are freely traded in our dystopian modern marketplace.
Long before Sarah and Abraham banished Hagar and Ishmael into the wilderness, the question of surrogacy provoked thorny ethical quandaries amongst world civilisations.
A fierce debate recently flared around the issue, after an academic paper went viral with the claim that “brain-dead” women might be used as surrogates. Just days before, an equally disturbing TikTok of a couple discussing tailoring their surrogacy candidates, based on specific physical attributes, also did the virtual rounds. The implication of both posts and surrogacy itself is that women’s bodies are a jumble sale of human hardware with an inconvenient human attached.
In centuries past surrogacy would broadly consist of an enslaved woman carrying her biological child, then passing it onto a married couple following birth, usually consisting of its genetic father and an adoptive mother.
Modern technology has provided more convenient options for couples or singles who do not wish to naturally conceive, or cannot. It implants fertilised embryos into a woman who will carry the baby to term, before handing it over.
The practice has consequently boomed in recent decades, usually as busy, wealthy Western couples seek to outsource their fertility to impoverished women in faraway countries. In part due to the international nature of the industry, there are no exact figures on how many children are delivered via surrogacy, but as of 2012 the industry was estimated to be worth an estimated $6bn (£4.7bn) annually. As of 2022, this had jumped to $14 billion.
Purchasing couples can demand how their surrogate urinates, what music she may listen to and ban or force her to travel. They can say whether her life should be prioritised over the unborn child in the event of a medical emergency.
Babies carried via surrogacy are abandoned or forcibly aborted for many reasons or none at all: skin colour, weight, premature birth, physical or intellectual disabilities, sex or even because, in the case of twins or triplets, there are “too many” of them. The desperate women carrying the child(ren) will be paid less or not at all if the purchasing couple believes their demands have not been met. They can even blame the surrogate for a miscarriage. Medical staff and other middlemen are instructed to refer to the pregnant woman as a surrogate rather than a mother, compounding the dissociative charade.
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