Surrogacy, is when a woman agrees to carry a baby for another person or couple. When surrogacy first started, it was common for the surrogate to also be the egg donor. Recently though it’s much more common to use a biologically separate egg donor. There’s less legal issues with this method, and less risk the surrogate will want to keep the baby after birth. I was surprised to find out there’s a lack of Asian surrogates in the U.S. (although no lack of them in India or the Philippines apparently).
This issue came to light since John Griffin posted a comment on my article about creating a surrogate family. His comment was essentially an advertisement looking for an Asian woman willing to act as a surrogate for a Vietnamese couple. It surprised me because it should make no difference what race the surrogate happens to be; since biologically, the baby will be the race of the biological contributors.
I’m no stranger to surrogacy since my partner and I decided to go with surrogacy to bring our daughter into this world. It didn’t even occur to us to ask for a Caucasian or an Asian surrogate. Yes, our daughter is mixed, half Asian and half Caucasian. But, she was carried by a Latino surrogate, who we were matched with through an agency. We had no preferences stated, only that the surrogate was willing to carry for a gay couple. Our surrogate was a wonderful woman, full of life and love, and she immediately found a place in our family. We still send her pictures of our daughter and keep in touch with her and her family.
I was also recently surprised that a Caucasian woman acting as a surrogate for an Asian couple would make the news. To me this shouldn’t be shocking or newsworthy. It just reflects again, how far our society has to go before race and color isn’t an issue.
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4 Comments to “A Lack of Asian Surrogates”
Cat_D wrote:
It might be a cultural thing, although in this article about a mistakened embryo impregnation in Japan, it almost sounds like an inconvenience the government doesn’t want to deal with (”bearing and raising children who are not related to the mother is uncommon and has been discouraged by Japanese medical groups”).
I don’t know a lot of Asian-American couples adopting either…
Posted on 23-Feb-09 at 6:37 pm | Permalink
Tracy wrote:
I first thought about cultural biases rather than just racial (though intertwined). And not to say that that’s a valid reason anyhow, but apparently it was equated with lifestyle for the searcher. It should be about the surrogate’s overall health, good eating habits, proper pre-natal visits, etc., right? Which I assume is all screened for by the agencies that provide surrogates. Going rogue is a different story.
Posted on 23-Feb-09 at 8:28 pm | Permalink
John wrote:
Wow, how common are surrogate births now? I’m glad everything worked out well for your family!
Posted on 23-Feb-09 at 10:28 pm | Permalink
Kim wrote:
Cat—the Chinese experience with adoption is slowly increasing. The ‘blood’ issue still remains—Chinese don’t want children from their own blood line, or view them as somewhat inferior. But the reality that there is a shortage of girls through selective abortion which gives additional value to the girls in the orphanages.
Problem is, many of the countryside (where much, if not most of the selective abortion occurs) farmers can’t afford the adoption costs in official state orphanages, so there has become an unofficial black market for infant girls. In some rural villages, the peasants do the simple math—if there have been 120 male births in their son’s age group and only 100 female (typical)—they will buy a female infant as ‘bride insurance’ —to insure that the son doesn’t later leave them later in life to find a bride.
Posted on 25-Feb-09 at 8:23 pm | Permalink
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