Feminist Blog- - Womb Raiders

The feminist blog, Jezebel, wrote an interesting story today. The article addresses an issue that a group of infertile couples are now being faced with. Two major companies whose sole job it is to pair up couples who can’t have children with surrogate mothers, and to handle all financial payments dealing with the procedures, has recently stopped being able to pay both the surrogates and egg donors. The money that was originally paid to the companies was put into trusts that may soon cease to exist. One of these companies, SurroGenesis, extracted large sums of money from the infertile parents that has now been lost in the trusts. SurroGenesis’s starting fee is $12,000 and payment to surrogate mothers is at least an additional $18,000. All of this money has been lost, while countless surrogate mothers have already become pregnant from the medical procedure.

The major question here is what to do about the surrogates who are now pregnant with another couple’s child, and will not receive any payment for renting out their womb for nine months. It is a question of moral and ethics. Should these surrogates be able to get abortions now since they have lost their payment? Or should they still be forced to carry out the pregnancy without any sort of payment for their effort? Many hope that the surrogate women will act selflessly and still go through with the pregnancies without any sort of compensation. However, the main principle of the pro-choice school of thought is that it’s the woman’s body, and therefore the woman’s choice.

The author of this blog post is a pro-choicer and therefore concludes that it is the surrogate mother’s choice whether or not to get an abortion and terminate the pregnancy. According to an attorney involved in the case named Andrew Vozimer, it appears that, so far at least, none of the surrogate mothers who were screwed over by SurroGenesis have gotten abortions performed, or have indicated that they are planning to do so.

This is a very unfortunate incident. It is painful enough for couples to find out that they cannot procreate and bear children of their own, but to be brave enough to invest their faith and trust, along with huge sums of money, in a company to find them a surrogate, and then go bankrupt and lose everything, is far more troubling. I believe that SurroGenesis and the other major surrogate firm should be held accountable here and be forced to pay the surrogates and eggdonors. It should be their liability, as the couples and surrogates were nothing but innocent victims here. In regard to whether or not the surrogate mothers should be allowed to abort the babies and find a new job, I believe they should have this right—Just as an employee has a right to quit if their paychecks stop coming in the mail or their company is going bankrupt and is likely to fire them. However, I could only hope that the surrogate mothers are more thoughtful and compassionate than that and realize that the issue is far out the couple’s hands, and go along with the pregnancies anyway. Perhaps agreements could be worked on a case-to-case basis and the couples can find a way to help pay for the surrogate’s financial and medical needs in various ways.