Celebrity couple Kim Kardashian and Kanye West and their sweet new baby Chicago. Tom Daley and Dustin Lance Black and their cute little baby Robert. And thousands of other couples and single people around the world who obtain babies through surrogacy arrangements. The general public is compassionate to their plight and supportive of their 'right' to a baby. But who are the faceless, nameless women who nurture and give birth to these babies? These women who are left with empty arms and leaking breasts after delivery? Surrogacy-dealing companies call them ‘special angels’ who ‘make miracles possible’, giving ‘an extraordinary gift’. IVF clinics call them ‘gestational surrogates’. The intended parents have promised them healthcare, full reimbursement, and ongoing contact with the baby. What could possibly go wrong? Everything. Because surrogacy violates the human rights of the women whose bodies are used, and the children who are born. Because it is a fundamentally flawed and misogynist concept to imagine that women are interchangeable. And it is wishful thinking that watertight legal contracts and counselling can fix this. In this book, strong and courageous women from the USA, the UK, Canada, Australia, India, Austria and Russia share their true stories of becoming 'surrogate' mothers out of kindness and compassion (or need for money), only to be deceived, neglected, abused, harassed, or abandoned by ‘baby buyers’, clinics, and lawyers. Their stories are tragic, shocking, and revelatory of a profit-driven industry that preys on desperation and women’s compassion. It becomes clear that it is not the occasional dysfunctional relationship or unreasonable surrogate causing problems in the surrogacy industry. Rather, it is the very nature of surrogacy as well as the surrogacy industry to use and abuse and discard. This book throws down a challenge to Big Fertility and its minions: women are not ovens or suitcases, babies are not products. Love is not to be bought.
Jennifer Lahl is Founder and President of The Centre for Bioethics and Culture Network and Co-founder of Stop Surrogacy Now. She has recently completed a documentary film Kelly's Story (2018) as well as other films, Eggsploitation (2013) and Breeders (2015). Melinda Tankard Reist is a Canberra author, speaker, blogger and advocate for women and girls. She is Co-founder of Collective Shout: for a world free of sexploitation. Among her many books are Defiant Birth (2006) and Getting Real (2009). Dr Renate Klein is a long-term women's health researcher and has written extensively on reproductive technologies and feminist theory over the last thirty years. A biologist and social scientist, she was Associate Professor on Women's Studies at Deakin University in Melbourne. She is the author of Surrogacy: A Human Rights Violation (2017)
