When surrogate mom Jessica Szalacinski told her tween son she was planning on having a baby for a male couple in New York City, he refused to speak to her for three whole days.
“He stormed around the house, slamming doors,” Szalacinski says of the tense atmosphere in their Nashville, Tenn., home. “Finally, my husband and I went to his room and said: ‘What exactly is it that bothers you? We really need to know.’ ”
The 12-year-old turned to his father, Eric, in disgust. “I can’t believe you are allowing her to have sex with two men!” he exclaimed.
Her son came around to the idea after she explained “just how antiseptic the whole process is.” He signed off on his mother’s two surrogate pregnancies in 2009 and 2011 (resulting in a baby girl, then a boy) and is supporting her decision to do it in the future.
The 36-year-old language teacher is one of a small but growing percentage of women agreeing to “rent” their wombs to gay and infertile couples who want kids of their own. According to the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, 1,898 babies were born via gestational surrogate in the United States in 2012, more than double the number in 2004. Unlike so-called traditional surrogacy arrangements, gestational carriers have no genetic link to the child because the eggs are provided by another woman, usually an anonymous donor.
Last week, “Tonight Show” host Jimmy Fallon was on the cover of People, beaming over his and his wife Nancy’s daughter, Winnie Rose, born via surrogacy last July.
The issue is a hot topic here in New York, where commercial surrogacy remains illegal. State Sen. Brad Hoylman — himself a gay dad who hired a woman in California to give birth to his daughter, Silvia, now 3 — is co-sponsoring legislation to reverse the ban. His bill is supported by fertility clinics, the gay community and infertility advocacy groups, but is opposed by some religious leaders, human rights lawyers and feminists.
A new documentary, “Breeders: A Subclass of Women?,” is being screened in Manhattan on Wednesday, and raises red flags through interviews with four surrogate moms who, unlike Szalacinski, suffered bad experiences.
They include Angelia Gail Robinson, 51, who agreed to carry twins for her brother, Donald Robinson Hollingsworth, and his partner, Sean Hollingsworth, of Jersey City. The agreement turned sour and, after three years of bitter wrangling, resulted in a landmark 2009 court decision in which Robinson was legally recognized as the girls’ mother, and later given limited custody.
“I think all surrogacy should be banned,” concludes Robinson, of Middletown, NJ, who worries that widespread legalization of the practice will see more women like her being treated like commodities. “The whole idea that you can just pay a fee and get a child is horrifying.
“Everything is focused on the people that can’t have children. Nothing is focused on the children themselves or the breeding class of women we’re creating.”
The documentary focuses on a range of concerns — from the health risks to mothers carrying multiple babies to the exploitation of poorer women, especially Army wives, who see surrogacy as a means of boosting their family income.
“A lot of lawmakers aren’t looking at these issues. They’re seeing things at the People magazine level. Someone can’t have a baby, here’s this technology and let’s change the law so we can help them,” says Jennifer Lahl, founder of the Center for Bioethics and Culture, which produced the documentary. “But is this really good for women? [Will we] create a new class, or maybe a subclass, of women who will become breeders?”
Ask Szalacinski about the idea of a “breeding class” and she laughs. “I definitely come from breeding stock and pregnancy is a relatively easy process for me,” she admits. “But I entered into the whole thing with my eyes open. Nobody forced me to do anything.”
She specifically set out to help gay couples after listening to a news item on NPR. “They were saying that some places weren’t allowing gays to adopt or foster and I thought, ‘Instead of picketing, I’m going to go forth and get pregnant!’ ”
At first, her husband, who was then a police officer, thought she was crazy. “But he finally got on board,” she says, adding: “I also preferred a gay couple for selfish reasons — a heterosexual couple is coming to a surrogate already crestfallen because they’ve tried and failed. Going forward, a lot of their sense will be wrapped up with those kind of emotions and possibly some envy and jealousy. But working with a gay couple is joyous.”
Szalacinski found “her first set of dads,” New Yorkers David and Alex, who asked that their last names not be used for privacy reasons, on the website Surromomsonline.com. “They were advertising for a surrogate and I instantly loved these guys,” she says. “It’s a bit like dating and we clicked. We didn’t just chat about the baby — we talked about our shared interests, like movies and theater.”
A contract was finally drawn up at a lawyer’s office in New Jersey. Under the terms of the agreement, Szalacinski was paid $20,000 as a first-time surrogate and two embryos were transferred into her uterus created from David’s sperm and eggs donated by Alex’s sister.
“There was a full psychological evaluation at the clinic and also a home visit,” recalls Szalacinski, who eventually gave birth to a healthy girl in Nashville in 2009. “The woman wrote down the colors of my walls. The bedroom was a periwinkle blue — I told her I liked cool, calming colors and she even made a note of that.”
As for the birth, she told her OB-GYN to take the baby to another room as soon as she was born in case any biological urge kicked in. “Of course, nobody moves that fast and I did hear a cry,” she says. “But it was like hearing the neighbor’s kid crying. I think it would have been harder for me if I hadn’t bonded with the dads.”
Szalacinski, a regular speaker for the support group MenHavingBabies.org, agreed to become a surrogate for the second time to Brooklynites Art and Matt, close friends of Alex and David, and she gave birth to their son in 2011.
“Art is of normal size and Matt is a very tall drink of water,” says Szalacinski. “He got so caught up in the moment, he leaned over me to see where his son was coming from. I was trying to push his kid out and he was practically lying on top of me. It was so comical and just so Matt. Later on, he made a joke that I did a bit of landscaping down there. That shows the kind of relationship you need.”
More recently, however, Szalacinski had a less positive experience with a third set of New Yorkers seeking her services. She signed a nondisclosure agreement, which prevents her from naming the couple, and will only say they are “well-known,” “mega rich” and working in the entertainment industry. They were due to pay her a fee which was significantly higher than the amount she received the first time she was a surrogate.
“I really tried to bond with them, but it just wasn’t there,” she says. “It was like a business transaction. After a while, I started calling myself a commodity.”
The problems started when the couple revealed over dinner that they specifically wanted a boy. “I laughed and said, ‘Well, I’ll work on that for you, but you have a 50/50 shot!’ And they’re like, ‘No, there’s this test they can do on the embryos.’ I didn’t know about it but they can determine the gender five days after the fertilization. It sounded like science fiction. And I said, ‘That’s kind of eugenics-like, isn’t it?’ But they hadn’t thought of it like that.”
Another warning sign was the couple’s determination to stick with one particularly attractive egg donor, despite evidence that showed her eggs were subpar. “They chose her solely due to her beauty, which really got under my skin,” says Szalacinski, whose first two implantations failed to result in pregnancy.
“My second couple chose their egg donor because they said she was someone they’d like to be friends with. But these guys were obsessed with looks.”
The final straw came a few months ago. The rich couple settled for female embryos but wanted Szalacinski to “reduce” (i.e., terminate) one of the female embryos if both of them took. They didn’t want to raise twin girls.
“I think I have a pretty good moral compass and, with this couple, I had to keep dialing it in,” she says. “I couldn’t believe that this kind of misogyny exists. My moral compass kept flicking off and I had to walk away.”
Happily, though, she still cherishes her relationship with the other four dads. “They were people I trusted and liked, so I felt incredibly happy to be giving them their much-wanted child.”