Two weeks ago I did a post highlighting Melanie Thernstrom’s ode to surrogacy in which she repeatedly referred to the women who gave birth to her children as “gestational carriers.” That was a first for me and at the time I said:
Sounds like something from a horror cloning movie. Well…maybe that kinda fits after all.
Yesterday I noticed a few fellow bloggers came across this rather creepy term with the news that Nicole Kidman and husband Keith Urban added a second daughter to their family via surrogacy. In a press announcement the couple said that they were “truly blessed” and thanked everyone for their support, “our gestational carrier” in particular.
Gestational carriers. Gestational carriers. I am still trying to get my mind around that. It doesn’t even sound human.
I am reminded of Dune’s “axlotl tanks,” which are women who are lobotomized and then their bodies used as gestational carriers for clones. Now, surrogates mothers aren’t lobotomized, of course. But they are being objectified.
“Gestational carrier,” you should note, is just a nicer way of saying “reproductive prostitute.” But it doesn’t change the reality.
I don’t know exactly how new this terminology is, but personally, I think it’s a way to depersonalize the relationship between surrogate and child. Traditionally they are referred to as surrogate “mothers” – which is what a woman who gives birth to a child is, a mother. But that just confuses things, doesn’t it? After all, she’s essentially just an incubator, is she not. She’s not the one who’s going to be losing sleep caring for a newborn baby. It’s not her child!
Oy! As if the act of surrogacy itself isn’t objectifying enough (both for the woman and the child)…
Related:
“They are just the wombs”
Outsourcing Birth
Eggsploitation, Surrogacy and the Business of Making Babies
4 Comments on “Nicole Kidman Thanks “Gestational Carrier””
I’m sure that in a far away country (ok, the U.S.) some evil scientist is perfecting his “robo-womb” and then mothers will be obsolete just as sex is when it comes to reproduction. I just wish Nicole Kidman could see that she could be “truly blessed” if she and her husband answered their calling to become adoptive parents just as she and Tom Cruize did. I have to wonder (and this is total speculation and I know Nicole has suffered w/ infertility issues for years) how many Hollywood stars chose to abort during the youthful years of their career. Now that they’re successful and established…and reaching menopause, they are left w/ few options for motherhood. Its a tragedy that a call-girl womb is even an option.
And did you know that Nicole is Catholic?
This entire scenario is wrong on every level.
She has already adopted two children, because she wanted to experience motherhood,She deserted them and left them with their father, Her adopted daughter is of age,and can choose if she wishes to live with her mother. She chose not too.. Nicole has never been a mother to those children in any form. She doesn’t hold an ounce of maternal blood in her vains Then she was gifted with Sunday Rose, her very own child, At the age of 43, any normal person would be so grateful to God, to have received their own very child to love and adore, when she said she couldn’t have a child of her own. I feel she uses her children as a means of getting attention and publicity, There was no photos of Sunday, until she had a movie being released, so she took a photo of Sunday to put on the Oprah show..this time she has released Rabbit hole, and was nominated for awards, but she didn’t receive any, so at the after party, she deliberately speaks of Faith, in front of a reporter. Now the saddest thing which isn’t being released or spoken about, is the day they made their announcement, was her adopted son (Connor) 16th Birthday! They chose the day they should have been celebrating the birth of her adopted child, to announce they payed some woman money so they could buy a new child. No matter what way I try to look at this, I feel it is wrong, for all the moral reasons. But to destroy your only sons special day, by announcing they now have taken on another child, which they brought like you would buy a pet dog . Nicole has never been a mother to Connor, I couldn’t imagine a mother doing a more hurtful thing. The woman spent most of 2010 making three movies, doing award shows and attending her husbands concerts and shows how could she be pregnant and still make these movies? and parade for the camera’s.. she couldn’t. So she payed someone else to do that work for her.. just as you would pay a cleaner to clean your house.She has a nanny that takes care of Sunday, and how much time would she spend with Sunday? Even the week of the announcement of Faith, she was out every night, attending art Gala’s, parties, awards nights. Yet she says they brought the child home, was this Nashville or LA?… because as I stated she was in LA being the party girl.
I believe we will see a photo of Faith, just when her next movie is about to be released, to ensure her face gets seen in magazines and she doesn’t get over looked, so she will drag out the children, because she knows the public and press will take notice then.
To buy a child and a woman to carry a child, which she calls a gestational carrier, like she is some kind of lab rat, that doctors impregnated, all to feed Nicoles narcissistic ways. Is against God. The woman pretends to be Catholic, but uses it only when she can get publicity from it, just as she uses her husband, and her ex husband, and her children. What happens in the future?..when this child asks, why wouldn’t you want to give birth to me mum?…What will her answer be?…
God knows the truth, so will she lie to her child and to God in the same breath?
The woman lies constantly, she announces one thing, but then a year or so later, she will do another interview which normally unveils the truth , and she gets caught out in the lies she had said.
As I states the woman is a narcissist, she doesn’t honour God, or her religion, or her marriage, or her children.
She is also the U.N ambassador for abuse against women. I think she created one of the worst abuses against women ever. Nicole has no shame.
Check the definitions: a surrogate contributes the egg & is therefore genetically related to the embryo/fetus/baby; a gestational carrier is not the egg donor & therefore not genetically related – for example, a woman whose medical condition does not allow her to carry her own child, the biological child of her husband & herself, would be eternally grateful to a friend or sister who carries that child for her/them. In this country, no woman who has not had a healthy child of her own can become a gestational carrier or a surrogate.