Surrogacy Sees Increased Media Coverage

Wall Street Journal: Outsourcing Childbirth, by Cheryl Miller:

"Katie is coming out of the mommy closet," Caroline (Maura Tierney) teases her sister Kate (Tina Fey) in the film "Baby Mama," out in theaters today. Kate, a hard-charging executive at a Whole Foods-like grocery chain, seems to have the perfect life -- except, oops, she forgot to have a baby. Cursed with a misshapen uterus, she turns to a surrogate agency, which assigns a wacky South Philadelphia girl, Angie Ostrowiski (Amy Poehler), to carry her baby.

Surrogacy itself seems to have come out of the mommy closet, to judge from recent media coverage. The New York Times and the Boston Globe have both reported on the practice of outsourcing wombs to poor Indian women. On a recent cover of Newsweek, the abdomen of a pregnant woman appeared with the words "Womb for Rent" emblazoned upon it. The issue's lead story, "The Curious Lives of Surrogates," ignited a small media frenzy with its sensationalistic revelations about military wives cashing in as surrogates -- in part by bilking their government-provided health plans.