Outsourcing women’s wombs: Surrogacy in the third world
By samanthaorwell on July 10, 2008 - 1:43pm
http://thevancouvermanifesto.blogspot.com/2008/07/outsourcing-womens-wom...
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).
