Having Our Baby: Surrogacy On Trial

Having Our Baby is the challenging new look at surrogacy that premieres on the Documentary Channel Tuesday night at 10.
It  answers many of the basic questions about this boom and there are facets I'd never even thought about.
As soon as I spotted Nick Orchard's name as director/producer I knew I had to preview this one.
Orchard's Vancouver-based credits include The New Beachcombers, Cosmic Highway and Cybersex Addiction.
Thankfully his production isn't a maze of questions as he chooses the personal approach.
We meet couples striving to connect with a surrogate mother and the location even moves abroad.
A look at surrogacy in India is particularly disturbing with women undergoing this procedure simply to make enough money to feed their own families --the racism here is something I'd never considered before.
We meet Edmonton couple Sarah and Jason Geisler as well as male couple Philippe Robert and Philippe Malo. And there is Ontario surrogate Eilise Marten whose story is particularly affecting --she has her own children but finds she is happiest when pregnant.
The state of surrogacy is changing as India and Mexico have banned surrogacy for commercial gain because of widespread abuses.
That portion of the film reminded me of another one from last year looking at poor people in the Philippines selling their kidneys for rich Westerners.
I would have liked to ask the Canadian couples why they just didn't go the adoption route.
And the experiences of these surrogate babies might be another interesting twist --how do they react when told later on about their unusual births.
Orchard is an expert interviewer and he manages to draw from these couples the often complicated reasons why they went the surrogacy route.
The point is made that surrogacy for profit is banned in Canada for what seems to be very sound reasons --in the U.S. the average fee is something like $36,000.
The strangest scenes are a reunion of surrogates and they turn out to be rather ordinary looking and completely sweet women --not at all predatory----I wonder as the years go on if they will ever  regret their decisions, that is certainly something to consider.
There is, of course, a huge stigma and much negativity because motherhood cannot be turned on and off like a faucet.
I'm wondering if there is a register so children who grow up can then contact their "real" mothers for whatever reasons.
How all this is playing out in Third World countries became for me the highlight of the film --the exploitation seems so callous and so very commercial.
I think the term used here is "reproductive tourism".
And the famous case of a western couple paying for a surrogate who had twins --the couple would only accept the "normal" one --the other baby with Down's syndrome was turned down.
The point is made very vigorously that in some cases the baby becomes a "thing" or a product,.
Multi-textured and completely challenging Having Our Baby (from Soapbox Productions) is compulsively viewable, a hit on many levels. Well done!
HAVING OUR BABY PREMIERES ON DOCUMENTARY CHANNEL TUESDAY FEBRUARY 28 AT 10 P.M. AND 1 A.M.
MY RATING: ^^^^.

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