This is not an article about infertility or surrogate mothers, this is an article about class, about the economy and about capitalism; that it happens to intersect the issue of reproductive rights and women's bodies makes it all the more complicated and visceral, which, in turn, accounts for all the squeamishness we feel about it.

Let's face it, we believe that there are certain things one shouldn't be able to "buy" or "sell," and even though Kuczynski did not "buy" Cathy, nor her baby, nor the black baby nurse, it looks to us as though she did. We see these three people, monuments to her need (however well-founded or "natural" or "animalistic" or "instinctual") and we are reminded of a time in our past when people were bought; a time in our possible future (The Handmaiden's Tale) when wombs are bought.

Kuczynski bought a process (the birth of her child) and there were humans along the way who aided and facilitated it, and without whom, it simply wouldn't have been possible. The real problem with Kuczynski (and the article) is that those "humans" don't ever seem to be treated as PEOPLE, and for someone whose greatest desire seems to be to have a baby rather than to raise her child this lack of humanity underscores the human as capital; in other words, the baby, Cathy the Surrogate (as Palin would say) and the nurse are all one plantation unit to assuage a need that CAN'T be assuaged, period. Not by money, not by a baby.

And please, people, don't say "I don't understand because I haven't been through the pain of infertility." That isn't what it's about. The pain of infertility is another article, not this one. This one isn't about infertility, it's about inhumanity.