Outsourcing women’s wombs: Surrogacy in the third world

I’m watching Oprah right now. I try not to make it a habit but I only have access to channel 9 and I like to watch TV when I prepare my lunch.

The topic is surrogacy. She is interviewing this white American couple who has been trying for three years to get pregnant. Oprah asks them the standard questions about the “alternatives”. White woman explains how she has tried and tried and it was getting expensive, they were getting demoralized blahblah. And she says, “we both come from big families [her and her husband] and we always expected we would have our own big family as well. We considered surrogacy but it was so expensive in the states….” Note that she does not address Oprah’s suggestion of adoption [another ideology-stricken episode where an adopted child “isn’t really your own].

(meh..as a woman I’d like to say that I would adopt, but I feel like we have to address why we feel that way and recognize that there is a social construction of what makes you a parent to a child)

Anyhow, so this white woman goes to India for her surrogacy. The price differential is significant. It costs about $80 000 in the united states compared to $12 000 (6000 of which is given to the Indian woman carrying the child).

Now I haven’t decided how I feel about this yet. I don’t want to condemn this before I research this a little more and understand why this practice offends me as much as it does on first glance. I feel like we’re outsourcing everything to developing countries because it is simply cheaper. Labour is cheaper. Now, quite literally, labour as in childbirth can be commodified.. women’s womb’s can be bought. I don’t knomw..like I don’t’ question this practice at all in the first world. Another woman in the Americas wants to have a surrogate from the Americas I don’t’ blink an eye. Fine- they are coming to an agreement. But say the surrogate is in INDIA, or any developing country… I don’t’ know. That rubs me the wrong way- these women are earning 6000$ for the rental of their womb..which is sort of an amazing amount in India. $6000 is something they won’t be able to make in a lifetime- and I am also keeping in consideration that the WOMAN is making this money (which is a pretty powerful distribution).

When Oprah confronts the white woman about what people will think she says, “who are they to judge..they don’t know what I’ve gone through not being able to have a child. I’m in pain because I don’t- Sangita (the Indian woman) can’t provide for her family because she is poor)- two people came together for a mutually beneficial agreement.”
At first it was a little bleeding heart statement- yes, it is painful to not be able to have your own children..I can get that. But really, should we be able to get what we want using our purchasing power or should we just deal with it? Like.. people in the first world.. we are so spoiled with everything we have and maybe the things we can’t have..we should just deal with it.

With respect to the money that goes to the Indian woman..it’s tremendous. Apparently women can have homes under their own names, the money is likely to go to benefit the woman and the way she decides to allocate it within her family. The money is important. So there is no doubt that this is helping Indian woman and this is beneficial to them… but .. I just don’t like it.

These are women’s bodies we’re buying, not just renting. The effects of having a child and giving it up is lifelong- even if it is not genetically theirs. At first I likened it a bit to prostitution. But I kind of believe in prostitution- not that it should exist, but if it IS to exist we have to decriminalize it and make it safe for women in the sex trade. I believe that if this were an equitable world women would not make the choice to be in the sex trade, but because it isn’t, women’s bodies are sold. Same thing about surrogacy. I think that if this were an economically equitable world women would not choose this for themselves.. but because they desperately need the money they do it.
I feel sour towards the ability to buy a woman’s body. In any shape or form.

What do you think? Is this exploitation? Even if it is- is it necessarily a bad thing?