#surrogacy

Gestational carrier… you mean a living, breathing, human woman who gets artificially impregnated and undergoes severe risks before/during/after giving birth because she's of low(er) socio-economic status and in great need of money?

‘With Just A Bit Of Honey’ 

Analogue collage 2025 

Rich women who are actors or ceos or celebrities often use surrogates to have children so they can keep working, not risk their physical health and appearance, or overcome infertility. Kim Kardashian, Rebel Wilson, Tyra Banks, Elizabeth Banks, Nicole Kidman, and Lucy Lui are all examples of wealthy women who have used surrogates.

Reproductive technology which allows for surrogacy will become more accessible to middle class women. If we reach a culture where it becomes the norm for an upper middle class/middle class woman who wants children to hire a surrogate so that her professional life will not be impacted, we will see an increase of women with more social and economic influence. Pregnancy is a lot of work, after all, and affects how a woman is able to participate in her career and may be seen as a liability on that basis. The women of the upper middle class will be able to participate more in their careers, and this may create an illusion of women’s liberation.

However this isn’t possible without creating a underclass of surrogate women. Upper middle class women will have their freedom from pregnancy only because the burden will have been pushed to the less privileged women. If the surrogacy market expands in this way, more underprivileged women will be dependent on receiving a paycheck from their agency by carrying pregnancies. The ability of these women to have their own careers based on their interests and desires for themselves and the world will be hindered by the physical toll of pregnancy.

This division between women who buy the pregnancy and the women who carry the pregnancy would likely be along lines of race, and nationality which intersect heavily with class. Women aren’t liberated until all women are liberated.