Women’s Mags Do Surrogacy
Posted by Marcy Darnovsky September 20, 2007
Biopolitical Times
Two massive-circulation women’s lifestyle magazines – Glamour and Marie Claire – featured articles about contract pregnancy in their August issues.
Glamour’s story, the rosiest of the two, recounts the baby-making adventures of 40-something New York publisher Beth Brenner, who is “never far from her Treo, which she uses to keep on top of countless business deals and coordinate her social life.” Putting her skills and money to use in her quest for motherhood, Brenner hires a 20-something former beauty queen to provide eggs and a 30-something single mother to provide a womb. The article is written as a heart-warmer with a fairy tale ending, despite a fleeting moment of “tension” when the surrogate wants to vacation in New York City and Brenner tells her, first “gently” and then “clearly,” that the contract she signed forbids her from leaving her home state after her 26th week of pregnancy without Brenner’s permission. Nonetheless, the article manages to portray the class, race, and generational differences among the three women as one more charming aspect of the feel-good story.
In “Surrogate Mothers: Womb for Rent,” Marie Claire reports on the growing number of poor Indian women who contract to gestate children for affluent Americans. The surrogacy package costs about $12,000 in India, while running up to $70,000 in the US; it also virtually eliminates the worry that a surrogate might change her mind about relinquishing the baby. Some estimate that surrogacy in India is already close to a half-billion dollar a year business.
Writer Abigail Haworth paints a mixed picture of it. She emphasizes the financial windfall and economic independence that contract pregnancy offers to women who otherwise earn on the order of $25 a month, and quotes the surrogacy broker’s reassurances that she screens out women who might be under pressure by their husbands or families. She also points out that some consider this new form of outsourcing “another example of third-world exploitation” and “globalization gone mad”; she even writes that “the system certainly lends itself to the criticism” that it “exploit[s] poor women.”
Glamour’s story, the rosiest of the two, recounts the baby-making adventures of 40-something New York publisher Beth Brenner, who is “never far from her Treo, which she uses to keep on top of countless business deals and coordinate her social life.” Putting her skills and money to use in her quest for motherhood, Brenner hires a 20-something former beauty queen to provide eggs and a 30-something single mother to provide a womb. The article is written as a heart-warmer with a fairy tale ending, despite a fleeting moment of “tension” when the surrogate wants to vacation in New York City and Brenner tells her, first “gently” and then “clearly,” that the contract she signed forbids her from leaving her home state after her 26th week of pregnancy without Brenner’s permission. Nonetheless, the article manages to portray the class, race, and generational differences among the three women as one more charming aspect of the feel-good story.
In “Surrogate Mothers: Womb for Rent,” Marie Claire reports on the growing number of poor Indian women who contract to gestate children for affluent Americans. The surrogacy package costs about $12,000 in India, while running up to $70,000 in the US; it also virtually eliminates the worry that a surrogate might change her mind about relinquishing the baby. Some estimate that surrogacy in India is already close to a half-billion dollar a year business.
Writer Abigail Haworth paints a mixed picture of it. She emphasizes the financial windfall and economic independence that contract pregnancy offers to women who otherwise earn on the order of $25 a month, and quotes the surrogacy broker’s reassurances that she screens out women who might be under pressure by their husbands or families. She also points out that some consider this new form of outsourcing “another example of third-world exploitation” and “globalization gone mad”; she even writes that “the system certainly lends itself to the criticism” that it “exploit[s] poor women.”
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