Articles

The New Face of Exploitation

09/29/21

John Stonestreet Maria Baer

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John Stonestreet

Maria Baer

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In mid-September, an organization called “TwoDadsUK” held an exhibition called The Modern Family Show in London. It was a trade show to sell fertility services for LGBTQ people. One vendor’s floor-to-ceiling banner announced,, “The New Face of Surrogacy!” next to a photo of two men embracing. No woman was in the photo.

This is an example of marketing being more about the audience than the product. The audience are those who’ve intentionally chosen a sterile union but who now demand the product, which is a child. The development and birth of a child requires a woman’s womb, hired out as a means to an end. Because no one wants to think about that side of this industry, all we see is the happy audience, as if the woman doesn’t exist. But, of course, she does.

Women aren’t machines, babies aren’t products, and no one is entitled to a child at the expense of a woman whose physical labor and emotional pain are left out of the glossy photographs used for the sales pitch.