Thursday, July 23, 2009 - Posts
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16 and Pregnant has been appointment television for me since I reviewed it for Double X's “Xxtra Small” and was thrilled to learn it’s been picked up for a second season. But like Jess, I find myself wondering whether the show will keep any teens from becoming moms. I suppose the National Campaign To Reduce Teen and Unwanted Pregnancy, which helped produce the series (get used to these sorts of nonprofit/TV partnerships),
would measure success by whether more teens get intimately familiar
with contraception and, for the love of god, use it correctly. The
show’s teen stars are utterly thick-headed about family planning. One
couple claims conception happened after they used a condom that had
been through the wash; another baby came about because of that oldest
excuse—the young dad just doesn’t like condoms ... (Read the rest of this post, and the whole conversation, in Double X.)
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Thanks to Kerry for linking to her compelling personal story of the ovum marketplace. As for the question of market forces bearing on gestational surrogacy sticker price, I have two words to illustrate the right circumstance for the right seller: Debby Rowe. $4 million payoffs not withstanding, however, I do sympathize with Kerry’s and Sarah’s observations on the hazy protection surrogacy contracts offer to potentially exploited owners of host wombs.
I remember well the first major legal case exploring rights of the
surrogate involved a contract gone awry (in the opposite way of the
urban legendary wealthy gay man of Nina’s classic six,
were he to renege on the apartment after the baby is born). In that
famous 1986 case, the surrogate, Mary Beth Whitehead, made a deal with
William Stern to donate her egg and rent her womb to create a child
with Stern, by artificial insemination, to be raised by Stern and his
wife ... (Read the rest of this post, or this conversation, in Double X.)
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An odd, not-quite-paradoxical consensus is forming in our discussion
over surrogacy. There is the assumption that the sticker price of
$20,000 is surprisingly low, along with the assumption that surrogacy
is so astronomically expensive that it’s only available to rich ladies with billionaire husbands and baby nurses.
Both might well be true, but I’m more convinced by the former than the
latter. Is surrogacy really out of the reach of your average
middle-class dual-income couple that can, at any rate, afford to raise
a kid for 18 years? Traditional pregnancies are by no means cost-free,
so the cost of hiring a surrogate over becoming pregnant is lower than
it first appears.
The real question is why, in the age of the active,
mercury-avoiding, one-glass-of-Merlot-will-destroy-your-baby-forever
pregnancy, wealthy women are not bidding up the price for equally
vigilant super-surrogates ... (Read the rest of this post, or the whole conversation, in Double X.)
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I've aged out of almost all of MTV's programming—watching barely legal
20-somethings binge drink grain alcohol on various incarnations of the Real World is no longer my idea of entertainment. But I've caught a few episodes of the MTV series 16 and Pregnant, and althought I'm not the target audience, I have found the show to be pretty riveting stuff ... (Read the rest of this post, or the whole conversation, in Double X.)
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Thanks, Samantha, for pointing out a tendency by some
white people to show, as you say, a “reflexive defense mechanism”
whenever another white person, usually one in a position of power, is
accused of showing racism. Coming from me, a black person, similiar
sentiments are often dismissed as biased. But aren't the white people
defending Officer Crowley and criticizing Skip Gates also showing bias?
The difference in perception is predicated on a simple fact: Most
white people have never experienced, and could never imagine, such a
thing happening to them or their loved ones. But if you’re black,
you’ve probably experienced an unpleasant, potentially dangerous,
encounter with white police, or know some other black person who has.
In my case there have been several such encounters ... (Read more in Double X.)
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