Surrogacy is nothing to celebrate

Reality TV star Louise Thompson has spoken powerfully about the ways women’s bodies are pushed beyond safety during pregnancy, and about the consequences of a medical system that too often fails them. She has campaigned for the UK government to appoint a maternity commissioner to address these failures. She has asked people to listen, to take women’s suffering seriously, and to recognise that childbirth is not benign or risk-free.

And yet, the 36-year-old Made in Chelsea star is now publicly exploring surrogacy as a way to obtain a second child, to ‘complete’ her family. This is a remarkably hypocritical position to take.

Thompson has spoken often about the importance of the early mother-baby bond, about how fragile and formative those first moments are. And yet surrogacy requires that bond to be broken immediately. It’s astounding that she would take such a contradictory stance – actively campaigning to improve health outcomes for women while praising the harmful path of surrogacy.

Pregnancy and labour are unpredictable, a fact Thompson knows better than many others. In 2021, after giving birth to her first son, Leo-Hunter, she went into septic shock and required treatment in intensive care.

As Thompson faced death, many surrogate mothers face similar risks. Natasha Caltabiano left behind two young children when she died in Bristol in 2004. She was 29. Thompson may choose to ‘ignore the haters’, but she has also asked the public to take women’s pain seriously. That cannot be selective. It cannot apply only to her.

In Thompson’s surrogacy ‘journey’, she will not be the one subjected to the risks and burden of growing a human. She plans to outsource pregnancy and labour to, it seems, a woman in another country. Why else would she be shipping embryos? Her chosen candidate will almost certainly be a woman with a lower net worth. She may be a single mother or a young woman looking to pay for further education or pay off debts. She may be looking to build a future for her own children by helping Thompson build hers. Imagine what circumstances might lead a woman to reduce herself to an ‘extreme babysitter’ or an ‘incubator’ to make Thompson’s deepest desires come true.

These women do not have book deals or a large Instagram following. They are quiet, invisible and tend to disappear from sight. When they cannot forget or ‘move on’, they come to the campaigners looking to prohibit surrogacy, aiming to protect other women, as no woman should be treated like a baby vending machine.

Let us not forget, the harms of surrogacy are not limited to the mothers. Children, too, are commodified through surrogacy. They are often born early, with low birth weights, via planned or emergency caesarean sections, and then separated at birth from the only home they have known.

Thompson plans to put a woman through an egg-donor-conceived pregnancy. A woman will be paid to take her DNA inside her and turn a lab-created embryo into a live human, drawing calcium from her teeth and bones to form the baby’s skeleton. Thompson’s own son could not be with her after birth, as she was receiving emergency treatment. Why would she want another newborn not to be with their mother at birth? Will Thompson allow the baby to know his or her mother’s touch? Surrogates are often bound by contract not to touch the baby they have given birth to.

International surrogacy is a rapidly expanding industry. It thrives on coercion, exploitation and human trafficking. When wealth crosses borders in search of reproductive services, it lands in countries where women have the least choices. To present this as an uncomplicated or empowering ‘journey’ feels, at best, incomplete and uninformed and, at worst, selfishly entitled and wilfully blind.

How can campaigning against birth trauma align with participating in a system that may increase the likelihood of birth trauma for other women? Are other women fair game? It’s a reasonable question, yet it’s one Thompson has yet to be asked in a live TV interview. The same audience who listened when Thompson spoke about her trauma will surely notice when that concern does not extend to poorer, foreign women. And they will remember who was protected and who was exploited.

If Louise Thompson’s advocacy is to mean anything, it must stand firm. Even when it’s personally inconvenient.

Lexi Ellingsworth is co-founder of Stop Surrogacy Now UK.