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Diversity in U.S. Families 319

Rent-a-Womb: “How Much for Your Uterus?”

L et’s suppose that you are a married woman— easier, of course, for some to suppose than others. Let’s also suppose that you’ve been try-

ing to get pregnant for several years and that noth- ing has worked. You and your husband have tried the usual techniques: sex at a certain time of the month, lying on your back, legs up after sex, and so on. Nothing.

You’ve both been examined by doctors, probed and tested. Everything is fine. You’ve taken some fertility drugs. Nothing. You’ve even taken some “just in case” pills that your doctor prescribed. Still nothing.

OK, hard to admit, but you even did some of the superstitious things that your aunt told you to try. Still nothing.

Your gynecologist has told you about surrogacy, that for a fee a woman will rent her womb to you. A fertility expert will mix your egg and your husband’s sperm in a little dish and insert the fertil- ized egg inside a woman who will bear the child for you.

The cost? About $50,000 or so. It might as well be ten times as high. You can’t afford it anyway.

Then you hear about a clinic in India. For $15,000, including your plane ticket and hotel, you can get the whole procedure: your egg fer- tilized and transferred to a young Indian woman, the woman’s care in- cluding a balanced diet, the hospital- ization, the doctor, the delivery, and the necessary papers filed. You even get to look over the young women who are offering their uteruses for rent and pick out one you like. She’ll become like part of your family. Or something like that.

Outsourcing pregnancy. What a creative use of capitalism.

No matter how you try, though, you can’t get the $15,000 together? Or maybe you have a fear of flying?

Or maybe you think that surrogacy in India is taking advantage of women in poverty?

So have you exhausted all alternatives? Not by a long shot. There are always friends and relatives. OK, none of them is willing. But if no one else, maybe your own old mother can revitalize her womb once more?

Sound too far-fetched to be even a possibility? Not at all. This is just what Kim Coseno asked her

56-year old mother to do. And her mother agreed. That’s their picture on this page. And, yes, Kim’s mother did a great job. She delivered triplets for Kim and her husband Joe.

And she didn’t charge anything either.

For Your Consideration If you really wanted children and were not able to get pregnant (or it is your wife in this situation), would you consider surrogacy? Why or why not? Do you think that hiring a poor woman in India to be a surrogate mother for your child is exploitation? (The surrogate mothers are paid several thousand dollars, when the annual Indian wage is about $600.) What do you think about the birth of the triplets shown in the photo below?

Based on Spring 2006; Mukherjee 2007;Associated Press 2008.

SOCIOLOGY and the NEW TECHNOLOGY

An egg from the younger woman shown here in Mayfield Heights, Ohio, was fertilized by her husband and implanted in her mother, the older woman who is holding the triplets. This older woman gave birth to the triplets, making her both the triplets’ surrogate mother and grandmother.