Following The Telegraph’s recent discussion of surrogacy as a new culture war, it is worth examining not only the politics of surrogacy, but the language through which it is being normalised. Beneath the arguments about choice, bodily autonomy, family formation and reproductive freedom lies a replacement of the language of motherhood with the vocabulary of commerce, logistics and technology.
What has been presented as a call for women to ‘be kind’ has developed into a full-blown linguistic disguise. Words are repurposed, euphemisms become the standard and biological reality is obscured by design, to make the commissioning of a child sound like an ordinary exchange.
We are expected to accept this language as neutral but it’s anything but. Language determines what we observe, what we overlook or and what we are encouraged to accept and not question. Let’s begin with the most straightforward.
‘Surrogate’ drops the label of ‘mother’. Associated with a deputy or stand in (though I would argue that the ‘intended mother’ is a primary carer and substitute for the real thing) this simple shortcut reframes the relationship a mother has with a child. ‘Surrogate’ dismisses this and plays down the reality. This is a recurrent feature of the industry.
Under UK law, a woman who gives birth is the child’s legal mother at birth. Motherhood is not rendered irrelevant because the adults involved agree to use a different word. The ideological, elaborate lexicon that has been developed renames the mother and reclassifies motherhood in their own terms and reduces a woman to a function or service provider.
But first, ‘Intended parent’. This relies heavily on the intention of the adult parties but also who the child is intended for. Prior to conception decisions are made and action is taken for a child to be conceived and removed from their mother at birth. This new phrase helped to sanitise and soften these extreme acts for society to make it tolerable and to persuade and normalise surrogacy, as a simple alternative way of ‘family building’ and ‘pathway to parenthood’.
By comparison, in adoption in the UK, the vocabulary traditionally refers to birth mother, rightfully recognising the biological and legal role that she plays. A birth mother relinquishes her parental rights (although this can be under coercion) and the child is ‘placed’ for adoption after a lengthy period of detailed checks, training, discussion and guidance, with the idea that the child’s best interests central to the entire process.
Compensation and ‘expenses’
Consider compensation. Traditionally, the word evokes thoughts of damages, medical negligence, injury or loss, for which financial redress is due. In surrogacy, it has become a familiar term for substantial sums to be paid to women in commercial arrangements. Compensation is for what, exactly? The physical hardship of pregnancy? The high risks of serious obstetric complications? The restrictions imposed on a woman’s life? The delivery of a child to another person? Time and inconvenience?
The terminology sanitises the transaction with this catch-all term without resolving its ethical questions. A financial payment does not make pregnancy risk-free, nor does a carefully chosen label explain what the money is supposed to compensate for. But the word does useful work: it makes payment sound like restitution for an arrangement where the purpose is to obtain a child.
Then there are expenses. In the UK, commercial surrogacy is prohibited, while reasonable expenses may be paid. This distinction has legal significance and deserves scrutiny. Expenses sounds modest and practical. Yet sums associated with some arrangements can be substantial, and the label itself does not tell us everything about the financial relationship between the adult parties. I have personally seen expense claims for everything from a gardener and childcare (where the father was taking care of his own children) to mortgage or rent, food and mobile phone bills.
‘Expenses’ help to distinguish so-called altruistic surrogacy from commercial surrogacy, presenting the former as a fundamentally different moral proposition. But does the absence of an explicitly agreed fee, amongst thousands paid in ‘expenses’ eliminate the underlying exchange? Does a friendship-based arrangement (most are formed on the internet or via matching services or agency events) cease to raise questions about power, expectations and the transfer of parental status because money is described as reimbursement?
A brief online poll in a Facebook group suggests that ‘expenses’ now total on average between 20-25k. Surrogacy UK research suggests this is significantly higher. Their 2025 report confirms that of 119 responses 26% chose £20,000-30,00 as the price paid and 25% paid £40,00-60,000.
But the lingo gets worse…
Incubators, vessels and gestational or embryo carriers
These expressions belong to the vocabulary of equipment, transport and biological function. An incubator maintains conditions for a child’s life. A vessel is a container. A carrier transports something from one place to another. The imagery inspired by these words is revealing because it removes the woman from her own pregnancy.
An incubator has no personal history, relationships, fears or expectations. And embryo carrier? For some reason this makes me think of a shipping container. One half expects the baby to arrive with a tracking number.
These terms revive a profoundly regressive view of women: that their bodies can be separated from their personhood and understood principally through the functions they perform for others. There is a particular irony here as contemporary politics is rightly concerned with challenging the objectification of women. Yet in surrogacy discourse the woman is objectified and disappears behind the very terminology.
Reproductive justice: justice for whom?
Reproductive justice is a framework developed by Black women activists in the United States during the 1990s. Women of African Descent for Reproductive Justice organised to call for the right to have children, the right not to have children and the right to parent children in safe and sustainable environments. The concept considers reproductive decisions within a wider social, economic and political contexts.
Now, the language of this all female movement is increasingly invoked in arguments for surrogacy as though the desire to have a child through another woman’s body constitutes a claim to justice.
If reproductive justice or gestational justice requires us to consider everyone involved, where does the woman giving birth fit within the argument? What about economic inequalities that may shape her decision and risk her physical, mental health and wellbeing, her autonomy during pregnancy and her relationship with the child she carries? What about the child, whose identity and origins cannot simply be reduced to the fulfilment of an adult’s reproductive aspirations?
Having or parenting a child is not a human right, nor does invoking justice settle the ethical questions raised when one person’s desires to parent depend upon another woman’s body, because Justice cannot simply be declared, it must be demonstrated.
Framing surrogacy in these terms leads to a call of discrimination if a woman is not available to undertake a pregnancy, will a woman be provided by the State? It seems extreme but so are other arguments in surrogacy.
Humanitarian surrogacy and wombs without borders
The vocabulary becomes more even troubling when surrogacy is presented as humanitarian.
Humanitarianism evokes the idea that we should as a society protect vulnerable groups and offer assistance in response to suffering. Attached to surrogacy, it can transform an arranged pregnancy into an act of charity. The ‘intended parents’ (I call them commissioning parent/s) become people in need, people we should feel sorry for. The ‘surrogate’ becomes the generous helper, and angel sent from above. The child is framed as the happy conclusion to a story of compassion, generosity and kindness.
But whose vulnerability is being considered? Who defines the need, and who bears the physical risks of meeting it? Where women living in poverty undertake pregnancies for wealthier commissioners, the rhetoric of helping others should prompt questions, not shut them down with wild, borrowed language.
Likewise, Wombs Without Borders evokes international solidarity and reproductive freedom. But the metaphor is telling: it is the womb that has a border, a very obvious one. A womb is an organ inside a woman’s body. It feels obtuse to point this out but due to the language of entitlement, it bears repeating. Her body is a barrier to meeting the demands of a global reproductive marketplace. That barrier must be overcome for the people we feel sorry for to reach fulfilment and ultimate happiness.
A capitalist vocabulary for a human relationship
Taken together, these expressions form a coherent, clever narrative. The woman becomes a carrier and her pregnancy becomes a service. Payment, with either label, ‘expenses’ or ‘compensation’, is a transaction. The commissioning of a child becomes an exercise in reproductive justice or humanitarian purposes.
This language shifts attention away from our capitalist understanding of the world to a more fluffy, friendly version we can swallow and once the vocabulary becomes normalised in everyday conversations we stop questioning why a woman is called a vessel because everyone else is calling her that too. We allow the word mother to disappear because a technical alternative has been provided. The language has done the political lobbying before the argument has got it’s boots on.
At Stop Surrogacy Now UK, we believe the debate must begin by restoring plain language to the subject which is saturated with euphemisms. The language is not incidental to the practice, it is one of the means by which the practice is made palatable. The more consistently motherhood is removed from the vocabulary, the more important it becomes to put it back.
We will speak plainly. Women become pregnant and give birth. Children are born. Mothers exist. No amount of linguistic engineering can make these realities disappear.
