An Interview with a Product of Surrogacy

903 - Breeders

I found this interview at Chelsea Zimmerman’s Reflection of a Paralytic blog, and I’m re-using her post title. I’m fairly certain that she’s intentionally riffing on one of the most notorious euphemisms from the abortion debate: “products of conception.” The point of that euphemism was to elide the humanity of the unborn human being by (1) picking such an opaque term and (2) conflating the developing human being with the other “uterine contents” like the placenta. The term “product of surrogacy” is an ironic twist on that, referring to the way in which surrogacy tends to commoditize and thus dehumanize the children who are purchased this way.

This all sounds like fairly strong language, of course, but I think it’s important to let the children who have grown up in this system speak for themselves. And that’s what this interview is about.

The video features Center for Bioethics and Culture President and Founder Jennifer Lahl interviewing Jessica Kern. It’s an important interview, I think, and full of insights that I had never considered. Jennifer and Jessica have also worked together on the film Breeders which I haven’t seen yet, but hope to see soon. You can watch the entire video here.