The huge rise in the incidence of gay men becoming fathers via surrogacy is largely seen as positive by those fighting inequality. Publications aimed at gays and lesbians advertise surrogacy services, and the annual Alternative Parenting Show in London attracts over 2,500 visitors. No wonder an outcry arose when the designers Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana recently described IVF children as “synthetic.” Sir Elton John, the father of several such children, rode a wave of indignation from his fans to call for a boycott of Dolce and Gabbana’s products. “Shame on you,” the pop legend scolded, “for wagging your judgmental little fingers at IVF—a miracle that has allowed legions of loving people, both straight and gay, to fulfill their dream of having children.”
But there is a dark side to surrogacy. Its accelerating use by gay couples is no victory for freedom or emancipation. On the contrary, the “gaybe revolution” has brought a disturbing slide into the brutal exploitation of women, who usually come from the developing world and often are bullied or pimped into renting their wombs to satisfy the selfish desires of wealthy Westerners. This cruelty is accompanied by epic hypocrisy. People from Europe and the United States who would shudder at the idea of involvement in human or sex trafficking are themselves indulging in a grotesque form of “reproductive trafficking.”
What’s more, their support for this vicious business exists alongside the shameful neglect of abandoned or abused children in their own countries. Even as commercial surrogacy has become fashionable, child welfare authorities face increasing difficulty finding foster or adoptive parents for the many thousands of children languishing in residential care. This amounts to a deepening crisis in fostering and adoption in Britain and the United States.
As a lesbian feminist, I campaigned for years for gays and lesbians to be allowed to adopt children, not only because of our human right to have families but also because of the need to give secure, loving homes to vulnerable children. Now the rise of IVF surrogate parenthood is in danger of making the acceptance of gay adoption look like a hollow success.
Baby farming has become a significant international business. There is no law against surrogacy in Britain, but it is illegal for surrogates personally to advertise their services, as they do in the United States and elsewhere. Nor are private surrogacy agreements enforceable in British courts, which means, for example, that a surrogate mother cannot be forced to hand over the baby if she changes her mind. But legal niceties pose fewer barriers in less developed countries.
In 2002 commercial surrogacy was legalized in India and Ukraine, now among the most popular destinations for British and American gay male couples seeking commercial surrogacy services. They offer the advantage of low cost. In the United States, IVF plus surrogacy usually carries a price tag of around $100,000; in India it can cost as little as $24,000, and regulation is far lighter. India has become the “rent-a-womb capital of the world,” according to Slate, with a “reproductive tourism” industry, offering services through some 350 clinics, that is estimated to be worth half a billion dollars. Gay men usually opt for gestational surrogacy, in which the woman has an embryo transferred to her uterus, as opposed to traditional surrogacy, in which her own egg is fertilized with sperm from the intended father.
Pro-surrogacy propaganda usually portrays the surrogate mother as a white, blonde, smiling woman who is carrying a baby in order to make a childless couple happy. But the real story is far less palatable. The mostly Asian or black women who provide the eggs and wombs for potential parents can suffer appallingly. In the most common situation, where a donor egg has been fertilized by IVF and transferred to the surrogate, who has no genetic link to the fetus, the tendency is to pay relatively higher fees to the egg donor and recruit surrogates from extremely poor backgrounds. In some poor, rural parts of India, parents of multiple daughters sometimes sell the older ones to trafficking gangs and pimps, who take them to cities to work as surrogates and earn money for their younger sisters’ dowries. Surrogates in India are usually paid under $8,000.
Once working as surrogates, women can be kept in cramped quarters and told when to eat, drink, and sleep. Monitored like prisoners, they may be required to refrain from sex and riding bicycles. Surrogates can also be prevented from using painkillers, even for conditions such as migraine, or required to take medicines like Lupron, estrogen, and progesterone to help achieve pregnancy, all of which can have damaging side effects. In fact, the entire process of commercial IVF reproduction can seriously damage surrogates’ health. The dangers include ovarian cysts, chronic pelvic pain, reproductive cancers, kidney disease, and stroke, while women who become pregnant with eggs from a donor are at greater risk of pre-eclampsia and high blood pressure.
None of this seems to matter to the clients. I interviewed one rich gay couple for whom the restrictions were part of the appeal. They said they found it reassuring that the women were required to live in a clinic under the surveillance of brokers throughout their pregnancies. In truth, there is a wide streak of misogyny running through this business, with women treated as little more than reproductive machines.
Sometimes there is criminality. In February 2011, police in Thailand disrupted a Taiwanese-run ring that forced Vietnamese women to have babies for sale. Though illegal, this baby farm, Baby 101, advertised its services. Evidence gathered by police and Thai officials showed that some of the pregnant women had been tricked or forced into service and raped.
Google Baby, a British TV documentary screened on HBO in 2010, explores the growth in global commercial fertility treatment. It makes for difficult viewing. It shows fertility, pregnancy, and childbirth stripped of emotional content and the women whose eggs and bodies are producing babies treated only as parts and vessels. It features a clinic and “surrogacy house” in India where the women sleep 10 to a room. “I guess they control me,” says one of the surrogates. “I am like a robot in terms of how my reproductive system goes.”
Another surrogate, who has just undergone a painful birth, says, “No one knows that I will cry and give them this baby with a heavy heart.”
Reproductive trafficking is an ethical minefield. Religious objection to, as well as blind prejudice against, lesbian and gay adoption still exists, despite changes in the law. The World Health Organization takes a dim view of the commercialization of childbirth, as do many children’s charities. But there has been little feminist criticism of the practice of profiting from the use of women’s body parts for the benefit of men.
Enthusiasts of surrogacy like its efficiency. “Truth is, surrogacy is usually quicker than adoption and means you avoid going through the hoops with social workers, having to persuade them that you would be suitable parents,” says one dad who used a surrogate. They also value it because, as this father said, it “enables you to be a genetic parent.”
Some supporters are determined to demonstrate that surrogacy can be managed ethically. Barrie and Tony Drewitt-Barlow, partners for 28 years, have five children born to surrogates and have spent a vast sum creating their family. They live in the United Kingdom. After their first set of twins was born in California, the two successfully challenged the American authorities to become the first gay couple to have both their names on their children’s birth certificates.
The Drewitt-Barlows have set up the British Surrogacy Centre, which offers free advice and, for a fee, in-house services that include criminal background checks of potential surrogates, clinical screening, psychological counseling, and management of each individual surrogacy journey. “We see ourselves as the gold standard in this business,” says Barrie. “We could have set up a clinic in India rather than the United States and pocketed the extra profit, but we care about the surrogates. Unfortunately, a lot of the agencies only care about the money.”
Drewitt-Barlow is scathing about the clinics in India. “There are male heads of families pimping women into surrogacy because it makes more money than prostitution.” Yet despite the best efforts of people like the Drewitt-Barlows, the growing acceptance and popularity of the rent-a-womb industry mean that illegal or simply crass and crude baby farms are bound to flourish.
Other critics of the business have fundamental objections to surrogacy, even where there is no evidence of trafficking or exploitation. Jennifer Lahl is president of the Center for Bioethics and Culture in San Francisco and a founding member of the pressure group Stop Surrogacy Now. “Whether it is commercial or altruistic, between strangers or just friends helping friends,” she says, “my efforts are to STOP surrogacy altogether and not have it with regulations, because regulations don’t protect women and children.”
Indeed, it is difficult to understand why couples would strive to create babies using such harmful, expensive, and morally dubious methods when foster and adoptive parents are desperately needed. In the United Kingdom, there is a shortage of 60,000 foster homes and at least 4,000 children are waiting for adoption; a staggering 100,000 children in the United States are eligible for adoption. Where are the parents who will choose these children and give them a chance at a decent life?
Julie Bindel is a journalist and feminist activist.