Hollywood actress Jamie Chung recently drew media attention when she revealed that she and her husband made use of a surrogate to give birth to their twin boys, now aged 7 months old, because she feared being “easily forgotten” by the cut-throat entertainment industry in which she works. Chung revealed she was “terrified of becoming pregnant.” 

The Weekend Australian recently featured on its front page a story about the journey Canberra couple Emma and Alex Micallef have undergone to commission a baby in Ukraine. It detailed the obstacles they have experienced along the way, including the logistics of managing such an arrangement in the midst of the country’s ongoing invasion at the hands of Russia (“Miracle of life delivered in a war-torn land far away”).

New surrogacy laws in the Northern Territory that allow adults to commission a child claim to be underpinned by the “principle of the paramountcy of the best interests of the child”. Such a claim is clearly incompatible with an enterprise that will certainly involve separating a child from its gestational mother at birth. What the legislation does – but seems reluctant to say – is that it will prioritise the wish of adults to acquire a child, even though this necessarily involves compromising the interests of the child who, of course, has no say in the arrangements made to “commission” their conception. If the child’s interests enter the equation at all, it can only be after the fact.

The distressing story of 14 month old twins born to a surrogate in the United States who have yet to be picked up by their commissioning parents has highlighted the fraught nature of surrogacy, especially for the children involved, who are often the biggest losers at the heart of such arrangements.

44-year-old Shaun Resnik has become the first single man to have a baby through surrogacy in Victoria, in what is being celebrated as “history-making”, “a beacon of hope for other singles”, and “a dream come true”.

Last week we wrote about how stories of desperate couples trying to reach their surrogate babies in war-torn Ukraine underscored the ethical issues with the surrogacy industry itself, which exploits and harms women and children.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has thrown the lives of Melbourne couple Jessica Van Nooten and her husband Kevin, into turmoil and chaos. The events which are occurring half a world away in eastern Europe have caused untold distress for the couple, who planned to travel to Ukraine and pick up their baby daughter Alba, born ten weeks early to a surrogate in February this year.

Whatever industries have been adversely affected by the pandemic, the fertility industry does not appear to be one of them. Of particular note is the number of children being commissioned through IVF or surrogacy on behalf of single parents who, perhaps in response to uncertainty created by the pandemic, have decided to tackle the task of parenthood on their own. In the rush to approve the personal choices of adults, the media does not seem to consider the situation of the children being commissioned in these arrangements and being intentionally deprived of at least one parent in the process.

The commodification of women and children is increasing. Some of the industries that profit from the sale of bodies such as pornography and prostitution are considered controversial, even if they are not outright condemned; the sex slave trade is vehemently decried. However, a more inconspicuous industry that objectifies and commodifies women and children with far broader social acceptance is the surrogacy industry.

There’s still a lot we don’t know about the impacts of surrogacy on both the women carrying the babies and the babies born to them as a result. In Australia, the numbers of surrogate births each year are estimated to be around 120, with more than 200 surrogate births to Australians abroad.