“Her Body, My Baby.”

Right. This applies only to the exalted gender, females.

Men, the LOWER CLASS of human, do not deserve such consideration. There ARE No gender or reproductive rights for such low class half-breeds as men.

And thus, feminism has placed itself into THE ULTIMATE logical bind, finally and viscerally proving out its sheer hatred and disregard of men.

I knew I was right. It was only a matter of time.

Well, I will give you women a chance to talk your way out of this mess...

yeah, I couldn't even read the article in the times when it was published. The last thing I wanted to read was yet another lifestyle article for the uber-wealthy about how hard their lives are. About how hard they have it.

Perhaps Broadsheet, instead of linking to the article (which will only ensure its popularity and thereby ensure the repetition of such articles) would do some old-fashioned investigation of its own and find out how many surrogacies each year are of this nature as opposed to just for women who have had biological reproductive obstacles from a young age. A comparison to adoption rates? An article on the women to provide the surrogacies and their motives that cut out the other mother's entirely? That's an article worth reading.

Please give us more material we *want* to read, rather than the garbage we're all annoyed by.

If you're going to publish a first-person narrative like this, at least make the first-person being honest with themselves and their readers. Why do we hold autobiography to a lesser standard than biography? Why do people think that readers are so stupid as to miss the obvious emotional manipulation in so many of these types of memoirs?

Amy said it much better than I, but I just blogged about this at http://open.salon.com/content.php?cid=54328 (if blog-whoring within the Salon community is ok!)

Amy, you sort of said it all.

OK, maybe someone out there can explain this to me, but I really just don't get the unbelievably expensive lengths some people will go to in order to have a child that is biologically related to them. I can certainly understand the desire to raise a child from the newborn age (which isn't always a viable option with adopting), and I can even understand (though I don't share it) the desire to go through pregnancy and childbirth. But I don't understand the desire to have a biological heir being so great as to hire another woman to carry and deliver one's child.

But then, even though I want children someday, I've never tried to have them and so have no idea what infertility is like.

... that I know men who have employed the services of a surrogate so that they could have a child, which they could then raise without the involvement of the surrogate? In many cases, gay men. In some cases, straight men. Using the surrogates eggs, or, in other cases, the eggs of some other woman.

These men exist. Not only women use surrogates; men do too. Why do you think otherwise? (Other than the fact that it enables you to maintain your anger level, regardless of the facts.)

So, one woman really, really wanted a baby but couldn't do so. Another woman was physically capable of having the baby, was willing to do so, and got handsomely rewarded. BFD. Now, granted the NYT woman sounds like a real bitch, but $60K isn't bad money for nine months of work (though I probably would have asked for twice that if I had ovaries and was willing to go through with it). Overall, though, it seems like a win-win situation.

I mean, this isn't totally uncommon in today's age of high tech breeding, is it? I just don't understand the outrage.

Thanks for articulating my discomfort with this story. Is anyone with a net worth under $1 billion sympathetic to this vacuous creature and her trophy-wife-and-child-collecting-and-discarding hubby who has now spawned three generations of children?

Her surrogate is middle-class. She made a decision, constrained, of course, by her circumstances. That's what we all do. Maybe she would rather have made the money doing something else, but couldn't most of us say that about whatever we do to pay our bills? Maybe you wouldn't make that decision - maybe you can't understand why someone would make that decision. But, nonetheless, someone did - various people do - and you have no idea whether they are in "serious need of cash." To say anything otherwise is condescending.

Of course this article was out-of-touch with the lives that most Americans lead. The New York Times does that. It's unfortunate and sometimes ridiculous. But that shouldn't be a judgment on the author; it should be a judgment on the Times.

You have a snarky, judgmental tone to your description of Alex: of her marrying someone older, of them having money, and even of her badly wanting a baby. Many women badly want babies. Obviously very few of them have the option of doing this sort of thing. But snarking about another woman's perfectly ethical reproductive choices is profoundly anti-feminist and is not the same as engaging with something critically.

is with the assertion by women that since it is their body, it is their child.

The courts seem to side with this position, AGAINST the father of the child (whose child it also is)

So, I rightly point out that where men are prevented on the insistence of feminism from having rights, women are not.

Can you imagine the outrage directed at a male who would utter the same phrase "Her body, my child."?

Like I say, men do not count. Things will change and women will have egg on their face for having been FOR a two tiered gender system, where women are superior to men in rights.

I actually feel sorry for the kid. He's going to have to grow up with a terribly narcissistic mother and will likely be in therapy for years. Like another commenter I started reading the article but was completely turned off by the classism underscoring it and couldn't finish. The writer actually seemed to have contempt for the woman carrying her child...talk about lacking empathy not to mention gratitude. The sense of entitlement was palpable, and it was disgusting.