Speaker 2
Okay. And you first got your start in podcasting the initial investment for this because you were a surrogate.
Speaker 1
You get first 15 times, right? It's three years somehow. I am Octomom. People don't know this about me, but I am Octomom. Okay. So I'm going to acknowledge right out front that my position on this is a little bit incoherent, but as going into this, I had no problem with surrogacy as long as the women, the women involved are not exploited as long as they were compensated and they do it willingly with no coercion or if they aren't compensated, but they're doing it out of their own, for some reason, goodwill. As long as they felt good about it, I have no moral issues with this practice. And it has always seemed to me to be a little bit condescending and paternalistic when activists claim that surrogacy is exploitation if the women involved don't feel exploited. And in fact, many of them feel like they've done a mitzvah and they've created children for people who wouldn't otherwise have them. And yes, of course, adoption is an option, but it is much, much harder to adopt an infant than people assume. So for every infant up for adoption, there are dozens of families waiting for one. There are obviously fewer barriers to fostering or adopting older kids, but these come with challenges of their own. I'm not going to judge anyone who wants a baby rather than an older kid because babies are cute and they don't back talk and some people care about genetic line anyway.
Speaker 2
Anyway, so I don't think there's any- I don't think some people care about it. A lot of people want to have- Yes. What?
Speaker 1
No, I'm laughing because you're right. You're right.
Speaker 2
Yeah, it's not like a small
Speaker 1
side issue. These crazy people want to have children that look like them.
Speaker 2
They want to be related. No, look, I'm with you that, like, ideally people would be just as enthusiastic about adoption as having their own child. I just don't think that's how a lot of humans are wired.
Speaker 1
Right. It's sort of the biological imperative. I think there's a name for it. Yeah, so my position going into this is that as long as there's no coercion, surrogacy is fine. But at the same time, I also think this trend, and it is a trend of celebrities and other rich people outsourcing the task of pregnancy just because they can is creepy as hell. And I acknowledge that this makes no sense on my part. I mean, if the outcome is the same, is it any better for a gay couple or an infertile couple to use a surrogate than it is for a Kardashian to use a surrogate just because she doesn't want to gain a baby weight? I think I'm sort of a low decoupler when it comes to this one, but rich people doing it just because they can't ex me out. Jesse, what's your starting position on surrogacy?
Speaker 2
I don't really have one. I mean, there's a lot of like market transactions, whether it's this or whether it's something like prostitution, where there's a lot of parallels because you're sort of effectively renting someone's body where it feels gross, but you can also come up with situations where everyone involved benefits. And there's this like libertarian part of me that doesn't want to, if everyone's actually benefiting and no one is being or feels like they're being exploited, I feel weird about like picking and choosing when we're going to step in. Now the exception is like there's certain transactions between a drug dealer and an addict where there's like negative externalities or the addict is not freely choosing. In those cases, like, yeah, sure, step in and in some cases make them illegal or block them, blah, blah, blah. It's just, I don't know. I have trouble coming up with like, it seems like an impoverished woman in Ukraine is probably being exploited, but like some rich college, you know, recent college grad could probably make a lot of money doing this and maybe I should feel worse about it, but I have trouble coming up with an argument against the latter, I
Speaker 1
guess. Yeah, Christy Teigen surrogate probably made quite a bundle of money, you