One Saturday night a few months ago, a friend who works within the tech enterprise introduced the good news that she and her husband were looking forward to having a baby. This September, they’ll engage in that indispensable parenting ritual: a mad sprint to the health facility and returning home with their newborn. Their start experience, however, will have a modern-day twist. My pal is not having the child herself.
Their new arrival will come courtesy of a woman stranger they screened, paid, and entrusted to incubate their embryo. Only after their surrogate goes into labor will they make their manner to the health center, flying from the Bay Area to southern California, wherein their surrogate lives and could supply their baby.
This became no longer their first choice. In her 40s, my pal went via repeated rounds of egg extraction through in-vitro fertilization (IVF) and quietly suffered miscarriages till their health center cautioned they could not forget surrogacy. At first, I thought the story turned into a rarity. But not long after that, a close buddy from university, who also works in tech, advised me that if she ever has an infant, she also plans to apply for a surrogate. Then, her male roommate said he would also discover one if he didn’t marry at a certain age. And with that, I made an intellectual word, as any off-duty journalist does on the weekend. Three make a trend. As a native of the usually avant-garde Bay Area,
I am used to having frank conversations on topics that might be unmentionable someplace else. But I admit that even I was surprised by how quickly surrogacy has become a feasible course for procreation. Surrogacy isn’t always new. The first felony, compensated surrogacy arrangements, started in America in the Eighties but remained stigmatized and unusual. According to the Centre for Disease Control, in 2015, surrogacy accounted for the handiest three of babies conceived in America through IVF.
