Via IOZ, I see that Thomas Frank is troubled by the fact that women are allowed to form contractual agreements involving their own reproductivity:
When money is exchanged for pregnancy, some believe, surrogacy comes close to organ-selling, or even baby-selling. It threatens to commodify not only babies, but women as well, putting their biological functions up for sale like so many Jimmy Choos. If surrogacy ever becomes a widely practiced market transaction, it will probably make pregnancy into just another dirty task for the working class, with wages driven down and wealthy couples hiring the work out because it’s such a hassle to be pregnant.
Frank is talking about Alex Kuczynski’s much-criticized NYT Magazine story. He finds it interesting that Kuczynski only quotes “the surrogate mother” three times. I find it interesting that Frank can’t bother to call the surrogate mother by her name (it’s Cathy Hilling) and chooses to disregard those quotes Kuzcynski does include. He seems to find the lived experience of surrogate mothers irrelevant to his thesis. Here is Hilling, paraphrased:
The experience of having a baby for the New Jersey couple, Cathy said, provided her with a deep thrill, and the feeling that she was needed in a profound, unique way. There might always be other willing foster parents, she said, but there would not always be willing, able surrogate mothers.
Perhaps this is simply what one is supposed to say to prospective parents, but I think it’s fair to assume that Hilling doesn’t see herself as performing a “dirty task” and would find that framing offensive. On the other hand, Hilling seems aware that she is performing a service worthy of payment, precisely because it is a “hassle to be pregnant.” People find this transaction so unappealling in part because women are not supposed to acknowledge that pregnancy can be a burden; rather, it’s “what we’re made for,” “deeply fulfilling.” “You’re glowing!” men say, patting you on the back for a job well done, an evolutionary purpose fulfilled. Surrogacy exposes pregnancy for what it is: work.
To her considerable credit, Kuczynski didn’t spend 6,000 words trying to signal all the officially sanctioned feminine emotional responses. She writes:
AS THE MONTHS PASSED, something curious happened: The bigger Cathy was, the more I realized that I was glad — practically euphoric — I was not pregnant. I was in a daze of anticipation, but I was also secretly, curiously, perpetually relieved, unburdened from the sheer physicality of pregnancy. If I could have carried a child to term, I would have. But I carried my 10-pound dog in a BabyBjörn-like harness on hikes, and after an hour my back ached.
Obviously, this kind of thing is not allowed. The acceptable reaction would be an expression of profound loss at the inability to experience the Most Important Day of a Woman’s Life; angst at the fact that she was forced into the position of spectator, jealousy of the lucky woman growing heavy with her child. Such dishonesty would not have done justice to Hilling and the work she performed, but it probably would have appeased Kuczynski’s critics.
This transaction is so controversial in part because women are not supposed to acknowledge that pregnancy can be a burden; rather, it’s “what we’re made for,” “deeply fulfilling.” “You’re glowing!” men say, patting you on the back for a job well done, an evolutionary purpose fulfilled.
Kerry,
Since you mentioned evolution, let’s talk about throwing out the baby with the bath water, so to speak. From your earlier writings, I glean that you distrust evolutionary psychology’s explanations of psychological differences in gender (as statistical generalities, I mean). Please consider two points on this:
1.) How can EP at its most intellectually disciplined–rather than the mediocre stuff–be dismissed as “just-so stories” without suggestion of a repudiation of evolution in general? Since I wouldn’t expect you to be a creationist, I’m asking for some epistemological integrity here.
2.) If you’re worried that EP will be a front for sexist agendas, I hope you’ll consider the gender-related cruelty that can arise from the “blank slate” theory of mind that serves as EP’s politically correct alternative. As a boy in America’s un-American school system, I was expected to exert infinite willpower to endure the bureaucratic tedium of school. I was labeled “hyperactive” in the late ’70s or early ’80s. Now it’s called ADD, but the point is that more boys than girls get this scarlet letter for refusing to stay in their seats. Haven’t I earned the prerogative of whining about de facto discrimination against males? If so, doesn’t a sophisticated appeal to evolutionary psychology strengthen, not weaken, the case against an oppressive system?
I’ve got more where this came from. In a few days, I’ll finally fulfill my promise to blog about your “Lipstick Libertarians” show on Bloggingheads.
(Crosscommented at Hit & Run)
Excellent post… you’ve identified the key moral, social, and physical components. Pregnancy IS work and is only fulfilling for some – perhaps even most.
What is wrong with a young, fertile women without the means or perhaps desire to raise children, being able earn wealth with that particular physical attribute? Sounds like a win-win to me.
As is often the case, this strikes me as little more than an inability to grasp that only three things change a society/culture very much: geography (or environment), demographics, and technology, and we should try to understand that change as quickly as possible rather than railing against it like a petulant child.
The question that jumps to mind for me is why should anyone feel the need to risk their health and their life for what amounts to chump change? Or, at the risk of sounding petulant, why are the poor always asked to deal with the afterbirth of the rich?
Herc de Gaulle,
Ten or twenty thousand (or whatever) dollars may be chump change to you but it isn’t to a lot of people.
If you live somewhere that isn’t a major metropolitan area then that kind of money can actually be life changing. It can pay for school, or be a downpayment on a home.
It’s somewhat insulting to suggest that these women are being hired out to give birth for some insignificant amount of money just because it is insignificant to you.
You’ll get no debate from me. Sorry if I insulted you. It wasn’t my intention. I was trying to say that in weighing the risks and labor involved, the compensation seems inadequate….and I don’t consider those figures insignificant.
Woman who hire surrogates just because they don’t want the hassle, are in for a surprise when the baby in question becomes a hassle for them too.
But Alex will have nannies and staff to deal with those hassles while she gets the photo ops and her little accessory. We know this woman and I think she does things like this JUST TO HAVE MATERIAL FOR COLUMNS.
Re-read the Thomas column. You have selectively cut out parts to make it conform to your own issues when the article is really about class and gender.
You say we should call pregnancy what it is: work. And you casually reject (dare I say ridicule) the idea that for some women it is not work, but a difficult, but fulfilling joy. Can we please just recognize that any generalization is silly?
What’s interesting to me about this discussion is that it seems to push the issue of surrogacy away from a basic reproductive rights discussion (anti-choice vs pro-abortion and all that) into something more akin to a prostitution debate. It revolves not around what biological functions women are allowed to perform, but whether they can get paid for it. It’s an equivalence I never expected to see, and it’s fascinating.
Kerry,
I think this is less of a feminist issue than you make out. The quote you provide from the Kuczynski doesn’t necessarily tweak people’s sense of gender roles, as much as it directly antagonizes the worry about rich people renting surrogates for superficial, venal reasons. The resentment of surrogacy is more a moral criticism of wealth and extravagance than it is an effort to keep women in a gender role. Indeed, this can only be seen as a gender issue by ignoring the womanhood of the surrogate.
In a way, this is similar to the specter of women obtaining abortions for cosmetic reasons. One can be pro-choice, and still find this choice repulsive. The same applies to surrogacy.
This is a wealth inequality issue more than a gender issue.
Women are not supposed to acknowledge that pregnancy can be a burden; rather, it’s “what we’re made for,” “deeply fulfilling.” “You’re glowing!” men say, patting you on the back for a job well done, an evolutionary purpose fulfilled.
I don’t get this. My wife has complained throughout her pregnancies, and so have her friends and my friends’ wives. My mom was never shy about telling me and my siblings how she had suffered on our behalf (while pregnant and afterward).
Maybe there is a social circle in which women are not supposed to acknowledge that pregnancy is work. But I have never heard of or seen it, and the very opposite is true in the social circles I’ve known.
Peter (11:35):
In your own post you say that pregnancy is “difficult.” And a “fulfilling joy.” But things that are difficult are work.
My job is difficult, hard, and laborious, but it is also fulfilling, and even a joy, at times. But its still work.
When you climb a mountain and get a sense of great acomplishment at the peak, that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a hard slog to get to the top.
Pregnancy is work, it is pain, and it is agony (and it is dangerous). Just because a lot of folks are happy at the end and wouldn’t trade that away doesn’t mean much. Anyone with basic understanding of behaviorial science knows that people intrinsically value that which they worked and suffered to earn, even if that reward is conventionally meaningless (which a baby is not, or course, but those psychological priniciples remain).
I think he does recognize pregnancy is a burden – his concern is that it will soon be acceptable for wealthy woman to use the womb of poor woman for that burden.
I guess the argument is: Rich woman should be able to have children with their superior genes, without having to suffer through a pregnancy.
Right. You want a kid and don’t want to or cannot get pregnant? Adopt.
Next up, rich people buying the organs of poor people “he’s poor and got two kidneys, i’m rich and want one, what’s the big deal??”
For people who have kidney failure and are about to die, buying an organ sounds mighty good. Hopefully we’ll just be able to grow one soon, but for now, there ought to be a market in kidneys, frankly.
Without market: rich person: dead. Poor person: same.
With market: (slightly less) rich person: alive (after painfully kidney operation)
Poor person: pain and suffering for about a month, and at least a year’s wages.
Kerry, with that logic Huxley’s “Brave New World”, with its Hatcheries, would be the perfect place for you.
And while you are at it, you can have some epsilons and deltas handle anything else that might require hard physical work.
None of the commenters seem to have read the original article. Kuczynski suffered plenty. She didn’t use a surrogate for convenience but out of desperation. Hillings chose what she did with her eyes wide open. She had less money because of lifestyle choices she made, but was similar in class background. She liked being pregnant but wasn’t ready to raise another child. I can relate to that. I started the article prepared to disapprove of what Kuczynski did and changed my mind completely. I really liked Cathy Hillings, who clearly wasn’t exploited at all.
Thomas Frank seems to be making two assumptions about surrogacy: 1) that it is a transaction between wealthy intended parents and desperately poor surrogates trying to pay their grocery bills, and 2) that prospective mothers hire surrogates just to spare themselves the stretch marks and backaches.
Both of these assumptions are inaccurate. Surrogate mothers and their families are generally living on lower incomes than the prospective parents who hire them, but they’re not truly poor. (Did Cathy Hilling need help paying her grocery bills? No; just her kids’ college tuition.) Some wealthy women may initially consider hiring surrogates to avoid risk to their modelling careers, but they soon learn that their figures aren’t worth the emotional upheaval, and they decide against it. Surrogacy happens between relatively well-off people who can’t bear their own children the old-fashioned way, and financially stable women who decide to rent out their fertility for the price of a new car. If women like Cathy Hilling don’t find that crass and dehumanizing, then neither do I.
you all are so well-spoken and articulate, I’m not sure what I could add…but here’s my thought.
If you accept the pro-life assertion that any fertilized egg is a person, then wouldn’t surrogacy be like BUYING a person, albeit one created with your genetic material? Isn’t human traffiking illegal? Therefore, shouldn’t surrogacy be illegal?
Blame the New York Times, or possibly Kuczynski herself for inspiring Frank’s reaction. Look at the photographs accompanying the original piece: In the upper photo the very pregnant Hilling sits at the edge of a dingy porch, with uneven floorboards and cracks and mold crawling up the supporting concrete. In the lower photo, socialite Kuczynski stands on a well-manicured lawn in front of her white manor-like home, baby in arms and with nurse attending.
Not saying he’s right, but the contrast is striking, and pictures are worth a thousand words.
Silly Kerry, women’s bodies belong to the tribe! We must use all arguments we can find to keep them from asserting actual moral and practical ownership of them!
Frank is not afraid to shovel guilt. Surrogacy will commoditize women’s bodies and that must not be allowed. Oh no. But he doesn’t seem to be proposing banning supermodels or the Swedish bikini team. Or did I miss that part?
Ok, maybe if we are liberal and enlightened, rich women can own their bodies sometimes under certain circumstances. But poor(er), lower-status women cannot; the tribe must control – by the social sanction of pity, paternalistic condescension & loss of status if not outright legislation – their choices.
Meanwhile, female monkey hierarchy must be maintained as women use their bodies against each other in order to find out who is the more “natural” and thus sympathetic, status-granted one.
I think it is less the idea of surrogacy that offends the sensibilities of Franks; it is the class implications. Even though Hiling is just lower middle class, he just doesn’t like that it is the rich buying their way out of more of life’s hard work.
But my guess is that Franks still has someone else handle his dry cleaning, or butchering, or anything else money buys.
He would not have objected if Kuczynski sister carried the baby and received a financial “gift” for this favor.
If you accept the pro-life assertion that any fertilized egg is a person, then wouldn’t surrogacy be like BUYING a person, albeit one created with your genetic material? Isn’t human traffiking illegal? Therefore, shouldn’t surrogacy be illegal?
First, I don’t accept the pro-life assertion.
Second, if to create a zygote in a clinic and hire another woman to gestate it to a full-term infant is to “buy” another person and therefore engage in human trafficking, then it also follows that to adopt an already-born child from its birth family is to engage in trafficking. Many adoptive parents pay considerable fees in the process of adopting children in need of loving families; should this now be outlawed?
Or, rather, is a fertilized egg entitled to protections that already-born children aren’t?
I agree with Kerry’s point that women should be able to do what they please with their bodies. I also personally think this should include selling organs (as we do eggs). But you may believe in women’s right to choose while being uncomfortable with the implications of creating a market in bodily functions.
That is to say, when large sums of money change hands we sometimes feel that decisions are not really free. You may be offered compensation for participating in a drug trial, but no ethical review board would approve a $100,000 payment to participants, or offering participation to inmates in exchange for their freedom. They are free to do whatever they please with their bodies, but some believe great rewards may be a subtle form of coercion. I think this is Frank’s concern with surrogate motherhood.
A hypothetical question: women are free to choose to have an abortion. Is it ok for a man to offer a money payment to his partner in exchange for an abortion?
What can I say? I fully support monetary surrogacy and my girlfriend and I are considering it [a surrogate] ourselves for use in a few years.
I don’t see and neither does she, the problem with a monetary incentive. They are providing a service that they are well equipped to provide (incubation). As long as contract law is followed (no coercion, adequate consideration) what’s the problem?
Since it’s surrogacy, it’s OUR kid. You are paying not for the child, but for the womb-space.
Alyson, have you read EJ Graff’s story on trafficking and how money makes the business a horrible crime?
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=4508
Agorabum (12:16 pm),
I think you misinterpret Kerry’s post. I glean from her statements that we should all accept that pregnancy is just simply unpleasant, and that we only glorify it because of some sexist concept that it is what women were made for. My point is that pregnancy is not necessarily that kind of “work.” Sure, you are correct, difficult things can be rewarding. Your example of climbing a mountain is telling. I don’t think many mountain climbers would call it “work” as in “unpleasant” or a necessary evil. It is something they enjoy doing, regardless of the difficulty. Kerry seems to want us to believe that a woman will always see pregnancy as a negative. I just do not believe the generalization is appropriate.
As a woman, I carefully read AK’s originally “offensive” article, and did not find it all that offensive.
But that does not mean that I do not worry about the class implications of paying other women to do our dirty work – it’s hit a frightening extreme when it goes past the dry cleaning and mopping to the point of paying another women to bear your child.
Alex had “no choice” if she wanted a baby bearing her genetic material – as her husband is a wealthy man who already had several children from another marriage, there was no doubt a financial incentive for AK to bear him a child, as opposed to adopting. (Keeping in mind that there are other complex reasons families prefer not to adopt.) This brings to mind the history of wet nurses – and the possibility of losing the bonding between mother and child when you do not nurse your own baby. Interestingly, wet nurses were more in play when children were viewed more as collateral in maintaining marriage status. (Think pre-revolutionary China or Elizabethan England.)
But will surrogacy be limited to women who can’t bring their pregnancies to term?
As a cell/molec bio major, I am hardly an expert on pregnancy, but I do wonder what the longterm health of these children will be. To my meager mind, pregnancy is not just a shake and bake operation. There are undoubtedly complex mechanisms at play between the pregnant woman and the baby as it develops in the woman’s womb.
Why are we making everything so complicated? What are the consequences?
The other obvious question that Kerry has avoided is this:
Is it morally right to engage a surrogate at exorbitant cost, when 1) so many women in the US do not even get adequate pre-natal care and 2) the gulf between rich and poor has been increasing for decades, and 3) there are so many parentless children who need homes.
I think these questions rest below the surface of much of the outrage. Privileged white women griping about their “choice” – it’s a bit of a joke when you’re talking about surrogacy in light of the current health care environment.
MNPundit, yes, I read EJ Graff’s story well before I posted here, and I’m duly horrified. With Graff’s data in mind, it appears that all families in need of children do not have the option of simply adopting a child that someone else was not prepared to raise. If the only money an adoptive couple paid, however, were for legal fees, transportation and entirely above-board orphanage donations, one could still make the argument that adoption is human trafficking, at least as easily as saying that surrogacy means buying another human being. Frankly I would rather see that children in need of families get adopted than that they grow up in institutions, if that is indeed how we are to define human trafficking. However, since, according to Graff’s data, there aren’t all that many babies available for adoption, surrogacy is the only way that many infertile couples are able to become parents.
This isn’t about rich people “buying their way out of hard work,” so much as buying their way out of work that they’re physically unable to do.
MN Pundit,
“Since it’s surrogacy, it’s OUR kid. You are paying not for the child, but for the womb-space.”
I’m wondering about that. Are we entirely dismissing thousands of years of evolution that led the DNA of a particular child to match (roughly by half) that of its mother?
What connection between DNA mother and matching DNA child is being lost by outsourcing the “womb-space” as you so, uh, clinically, put it?
I do not doubt that you will love the child you derive from the surrogacy. My question is about how this fantastically artificial process might rob the mother/child bond of some of its natural strength. Doubtless, it’s much more important what happens after one is born, than while one is developing in the womb. But… it’s also easier to say that because we don’t really have extensive research on the long-term effects.
We know that being nursed by one’s own mother provides significant advantages to the child’s immune system. Will unmatching DNA between surrogate and fetus have an effect on the baby’s development and immunity?
What don’t we know here? Just because we “can” doesn’t mean we “should” – at least not without asking some questions.
[...] prostitution where this attitude crops up. Kerry Howley has recently pointed out two other areas— pregnancy surrogacy and egg “donation”—where money is often spoke of as a corrupting influence in an [...]
Herc de Gaulle,
I wasn’t really insulted (hey, I live in LA where that IS an insignificant amount of money) but the point remains.
I’m going out on a limb on this one as I’m too lazy to check my facts at the moment but for a women under 25, isn’t the risk pretty marginal? As for the labor… $10-$20 for nine months of part-time work… that’s not bad. If I was back in college, and a woman, I might very well consider that option.
Anyone think I’m out of my mind on both of those points?
To be perfectly honest, I don’t really have any idea as to how much of a burden pregnancy actually is. All of the women I know who’ve had children say it isn’t a big deal and all of the ones that haven’t are somewhat terrified at the prospect. If it isn’t a big deal then 20k seems pretty awesome but if it’s a terrible burden then…
Maria wrote:
“A hypothetical question: women are free to choose to have an abortion. Is it ok for a man to offer a money payment to his partner in exchange for an abortion?”
An excellent question and one that I think I will pose the next time I’m in an abortion debate. I would say no, and that offering a financial “settlement” is a perfectly reasonable way to handle any disagreement.
And one final point:
I spoke with my co-worker, who’s had six children, and she responded that pregnancy, even if she couldn’t keep the child, is fun. She actually enjoys the physical experience of the child growing inside of her. Even though she suffers some negative physical effects, there are also positive ones such as having more energy.
She argues that pregnancy hasn’t been exposed as work as you suggest because the price is too low. It can cost more to adopt and a decent stripper or escort can make more money over a comparable period of time “selling their bodies.”
She actually suggested that she would charge as much as she thought she could get but would do it for a lot less than the market rate – only because it’s harder to have sex with her husband for a few months.
Not only is it not difficult to her but she actually enjoys the experience of pregnancy itself, even if the child was nonexistent after the birth. I followed up with two more women who’ve had children (all ranging in ages from 26-39) and one of the two said the same thing.
Someone should conduct a poll…
Gee, talk about dehumanizing.
“I guess the argument is: Rich woman should be able to have children with their superior genes, without having to suffer through a pregnancy.
Right. You want a kid and don’t want to or cannot get pregnant? Adopt.
Next up, rich people buying the organs of poor people “he’s poor and got two kidneys, i’m rich and want one, what’s the big deal??””
This is stupid logic. What’s the difference when adopting? Someone still went through the pain, and probably does not have the 20,000 dollars, nor did she chose to do so. The surrogate mother in this case was not forced to do it. She was not starving. DId not have to. It was her choice. I do not see the problem with it. Making a problem out of it is insulting the “poor women”.
THUCY — you are absolutely right and the first person i have seen wonder about the energetic aspects of gestation, why are people so totally blind
to this whole side of the equation ? We are not machines and the whole question of maternal/fetal interaction has been completely ignored to date . . .
[...] Kerry Howley quote Ericka Andersen used in her post about surrogacy rather bothered me: Women are not [...]
Reading Ms. Kuczynski’s account of her journey toward motherhood, as well as Thomas Frank’s comments about her piece. I couldn’t help thinking something was being omitted. The piece of the puzzle which would’ve turned Kuczynki’s challenge of infertility into a lesson-in-fertility. I was happy to learn about the birth of her son, but saddened that she looked back at her years of failed baby-making as a “burden and a period marked by weariness and despair.” My hope is that she heals the images of “terrifying tortures of childbirth,” rather than passes them on to her son, or the next generation of women in her family.
In the last fifteen years of my work as a reproductive-health-consumer-advocate I have seen hundreds of women and men turn their difficulty into the kindest of wake up calls. The rising casualties of our culture’s fascination with reproductive technology may not surface for years. When we subject ourselves to as many as (in the case of Ms. Kuczynski) twelve cycles of hormone stimulants with largely unknown side effects, when we — silence the wisdom of our bodies simply because there is no physiological explanation to why they behave the way they do — we turn an instrument of healing into a self-punishing weapon.
Achieving a healthy pregnancy is still one of the challenges where certainty eludes even the best and the brightest.. Something about conceiving a child makes it startlingly clear that we are more than a collection of well-designed organs. Those of us who, albeit involuntarily, travel the scenic route to parenting, and don’t have $200, 000 stashed away for high tech rollercoaster rides, might want to stop, pull up a chair and do what we can to decode the messages behind symptoms. We’d certainly be foolish not to try.
[...] Thomas Frank Will Not Buy Your Baby!Via IOZ, I see that Thomas Frank is troubled by the fact that women are allowed to form contractual agreements involving their own reproductivity:. When money is exchanged for pregnancy, some believe, surrogacy comes close to . [...]
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