Happy Friday!
For the last year, I’ve been working on an article about commercial surrogacy in the United States. As a rich country, the US is a huge outlier in its enthusiasm for the practice: Canada permits only altruistic surrogacy, as do the European Union and Britain. (Even Israel, which is generally very pro-assisted reproductive technologies, imposes quite strict limits, such as a requirement of no serious criminal convictions for intended parents.)
Meanwhile, several developing countries have banned international surrogacy because of the risk of human trafficking: Thailand did so after an Australian paedophile and his wife didn’t take home the twin that had Down Syndrome. The big destinations outside America are Mexico, where some very sketchy people indeed are involved; Georgia, the Russia-aligned country, not the state in the Deep South; and North Cyprus, which is not recognised in international law as an independent territory. The English family courts recently had to sort out adoption arrangements for two four-year-olds born to Ukrainian surrogates, in north Cyprus, using donor eggs and sperm, who were therefore stateless.
That is the world of cut-price surrogacy. America, by contrast, services both its own citizens and rich foreigners with $150,000-$200,000 to spend. The U.S. leaves regulation of surrogacy to individual states, with the result that California—the home of the industry—has become a new Wild West. The state has become the favoured destination of both Chinese billionaires (one of whom has created dozens of babies, all boys, and had a fleet of nannies courier them to him in China) and ordinary Chinese citizens affected by the one-child policy (one of whom got into a hell of a mess, in a story that emerged after I had sent this piece to press).
I met lots of very principled and ethical people working in the surrogacy industry while reporting this story, and kudos to them—they are going above and beyond what’s legally required. But in my view, the industry badly needs regulation.
You can read the article in full, for free, by using this gift link.
Helen
Looking for some autumn reading? The comments from last week’s post had some great suggestions: Ngaio Marsh was a favourite, as was Josephine Tey (as was a series of books where Josephine Tey is a character). I’ll report back.
Quite surprised to see the book that’s being read in this new Smosh video:
Quick Links
Friend of the Stocking Matt Muir has a project to make the internet more creative and variegated: the Tiny Awards. Vote here!
“I embrace the convenient belief that most people are fundamentally decent – and, more importantly, too wrapped up in their own affairs to take much notice of me. After all, don’t underestimate the effort required to commit a murder, especially in a remote location – much easier to stay in your lonely, creepy old cabin and doomscroll instead.” Felicity Cloake on travelling alone. Admittedly, I don’t do camping, but I do like the bit about solo travel where you have to be sociable with strangers, or you’ll go mad.
“It’s full of winks and nods and glances; people are always screeching cars round corners, sneaking out of windows, swinging with the band, or heeling it from the mob; there are dancing girls, spinning basses, screaming whistles, flasks of bourbon, and glittering jewels. This is everything a movie ought to be.” Some Like It Hot is one of my favourite films. Henry Oliver loves it too.
“Last year, the Orrs launched a £2mn fundraising campaign for a new cultural centre near the family home, to be known as Scruton House (a tribute to Scruton, who died in 2020), and a wider overhaul of the properties used by the community. The campaign was subsequently scaled back to £500,000, then taken down having raised little more than £21,000.” The Financial Times on Reform’s James Orr, published just before he had to step down as policy director. The fall of Viktor Orban’s government in Hungary has made life chillier for a fair few of the “Christian right” in Europe, because a cozy source of conference invitations and introductions to rich Americans has been cut off.
See you next time!
What surrogacy industry needs is a worldwide ban. Even altruistic surrogacy sometimes ends up being a disaster: in one case in Britain, a sister carried a child for her brother, but it led to them falling out and the conflict affecting the wider family. Not to mention that pregnancy and birth are still the most dangerous thing a healthy woman can do, and I’m not just talking about the risk of death(small, but not 0%), but various health issues, some of which will be permanent. As Surrogacy Concern points out, a surrogate pregnancy is 3 times riskier than a “standard” pregnancy, especially when the egg isn’t surrogate’s own, but even if it is. Not to mention that baby’s needs and wellbeing come second to the needs (or whims) of their buyers (because that’s who they are).
The only question one needs to ask to establish whether surrogacy is ethical is: do rich women ever do it for women poorer than them? We all know the answer intuitively.
"Friend of the Stocking". Sounds like a 1950's euphemism for some form of kink.