The term “collateral damage” is used in military contexts with reference to the immunity of non-combatants, in terms of the principle of distinction between civilian and military targets. The use of the term is a recognition that military action has effects, some intended and some not, for which the actors may be held morally and legal responsible. In its more common and more cynical usage, “collateral damage” has become euphemistic code for wanton destruction that is simply shrugged off by those who “can handle the truth”. Since at least the time of the Iraq war, the term no longer commonly refers to the consideration of “unintended damage” — such as in traditional Catholic moral reasoning — but rather to “intended damage” that is calculated and factored into the planning of a military mission. And everyone knows this, even if we don’t always say it out loud.
The international surrogacy industry too is calculated in the damage it inflicts to women’s lives. This is, in part, because the surrogacy system works on a franchise model — in other words, it doesn’t look like a part of global late-capitalism; it looks like the creation of happy families. And these “families” are not presented as what they are: part of the damage and exploitation of global capitalism. Instead, the pictures on surrogacy websites are of glossy people who are said to have taken a “journey”: a “surrogacy journey”.
These pretty pictures, and this pretty language, disguise — indeed, we claim, are intended to disguise — a dirty industry which traffics in women’s lives as well as the lives of newborn babies. It runs parallel to other industries that put a price on the bodies of persons, like the trade in bodily organs, parts, and fluids. But the organ trade is unlawful. The traffic in organs is one of the targets of the UN Global Plan of Action to Combat Trafficking in Persons, with the UN General Assembly’s most recent resolution to combat organ trafficking being adopted in 2018. Few people can be found to defend organ trading.
Not so with surrogacy. The surrogacy journey has a seemingly endless line of philosophers and public health exponents waiting to defend the industry and its practices. One of its most effective rhetorical defences is to refer to what is known as “altruistic surrogacy” as an exemplar of what surrogacy could be like if it were better organised and regulated. But it is just another pretty picture that serves as a screen for an industry based on the commodification of the person: a woman turned into a container for an embryo, whether for payment or expenses. All states and territories in Australia make a distinction in law between commercial and non-commercial surrogacy (except for the Northern Territory, which has no legislation on this question), with the former being unlawful in all states. In the case of New South Wales, Queensland, and the ACT, entering into international commercial agreements for surrogacy is also unlawful and is punishable by a heavy fine and/or gaol. The reality is that altruistic surrogacy — commonly defined as those arrangements in which no money but only the baby changes hands — is simply a wing of the main part of the surrogacy industry.
Women are the collateral damage of the surrogacy industry — not only its unintended damage, but its intended and calculated damage. For the industry and what it calls “clients”, the damage done to the woman who fills the role of “surrogate” is considered as entirely proportionate to the “happy ending” — a new healthy baby — that is the selling point of the industry.
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