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Friday, October 25, 2013

Surrogacy on TV

Does anyone else watch The Good Wife?  It's a favorite in my house.  Sunday nights, after the boys go to bed, Derek and I love the show.  I have been a fan of the lead actress since her ER days and I was thrilled that she got another TV show -- especially such a good one.

A couple weeks ago the show had a lawsuit about surrogacy.  I have to say that I spent half an hour yelling at the TV! 

The gist of the episode, called A Precious Commodity, was that the intended parents found out that their baby was going to have an 85% chance of a birth defect.  They wanted the surrogate to abort the baby and the surrogate refused.

I yelled at the TV because I had learned that, regardless of what my contract with my surrogate said, there are some federal laws that overrule it.  Every surrogate has the right to make decisions about her own body and state courts and state laws can't change that.  I remember my lawyer telling me, "It's your fetus, but her body." 

I also yelled at the TV because the surrogate was portrayed to be a candy-eating college student.  Illinois law says that to be a surrogate a woman must have already had a child.  I believe she also has to be raising that child.  It's true that this couple on TV might not have found their surrogate through a reputable agency.  There are certainly ways to get around the best practices and my guess is that could be a reason why they ended up in court.  There was no mention of an agency in the show.

I won't spoil the end, but let's just say that I think the writers realized they had 10 minute left to wrap up the story and they came up with something that wasn't very satisfying to me. 

So while I'm glad that surrogacy made it onto TV, I'm not sure showing this story really was portraying surrogacy in a good light.  Could this happen?  Yes.  Does it happen?  I'm sure it does.  I just know that if anyone asks me about this episode I'll emphasize the great relationship I had - and still have - with my surrogate and the support we gave each other during our journey.   


2 comments:

  1. It's annoying when not 100% accurate, but the more exposure the better. I find most in the gay community pretty well informed, automatically understanding (or even assuming) GS, egg donor etc. but oh my god the other mothers at my gym's kids club? It's silly how many times I've had to explain that yes, the boys are biologically related but were carried by two different surrogates. Sometimes it's even still all *blank stare*
    K

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  2. I haven't seen this episode or show for that matter, but I can imagine how the surrogate was portrayed. I wish more people realized most surrogates are normal woman. We generally aren't a population of money hungry, trailer trash women society can perceive us to be. Not that this episode was doing that, but I assume there were some misleading behaviors of the surrogate actor.

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