"(Shutterstock) The lurid story has captured the horrified imaginations of millions ever since it broke last Wednesday in Wired magazine: A San Francisco "angel investor" by the name of Cindy Bi-who manages a venture capital firm called CapitalX-is attempting to sue her surrogate for the imagined crime of miscarrying a fetus she understood as her own possession. Bi believes the surrogate should be charged with murder, although the "gestational carrier" in question nearly died in the process herself."
"In reality, while this grotesque episode joins a long list of litigious surrogacy-related melodramas, it says more about natalism in Silicon Valley than it does about any inherent ethical egregiousness of compensating or delegating the carrying of fetuses. In 2019, amid an "explosion of demand" for alienated gestational labor in California, The Economist celebrated Silicon Valleyites' willingness to espouse "stigmatized" kin-making practices and "go off script.""
An investor attempted to sue her gestational carrier for miscarrying a fetus she treated as her property and sought criminal charges despite the carrier nearly dying. Public outrage framed the investor's campaign as deranged and prompted calls to end surrogacy. The case, however, reflects broader natalist values in Silicon Valley and a culture that treats parenthood as proprietary. High demand for compensated gestational labor, soft eugenics, competitiveness, and individualism have driven commodified approaches to baby-making. The root problem lies in structural norms that curate and market pregnancies rather than isolated litigious incidents.
Read at The Nation
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