Oprah Takes on Fertility

On Tuesday, Oprah had the ever-investigative Lisa Ling on the show to reveal how American couples are "renting" out Indian women's wombs as repositories for their fertilized eggs.

I tuned in because fertility issues are not commonly covered by mainstream media, unless it is to scare women with threats of biological clocks or to celebrate another drug-addicted anorexic pop star getting knocked up.

From the previews, I expected Lisa Ling to lay in hard to the white Americans using Indian women as human heat lamps. However, I was genuinely shocked to find LL and Oprah clapping and laughing and mewing over how wonderful it is that women across the world are helping each other out. American woman gets baby; Indian woman gets $6500 (which is apparently enough for a house and a decent kitchen in an Indian village).

One moment of particular horror came when they showed a photo of Kendall, the American dad-to-be, standing beside his Indian surrogate. He towered over her in a grotesque and unintentional display of hyper-masculinity and colonialism. Turns out the father of the fetus is 6"5. The Indian surrogate? 4"6.

The American couple laughed along with Oprah and Lisa Ling, who blurted, "Hello C-section!" (a joke Oprah would later repeat). Okay, since when are C-sections funny, painless and par for course?

I felt horrible for Jennifer, the American mom-to-be. There is a profound grief that is experienced when you are faced with infertility, and I really believe that, to a certain extent, a woman should be able to spend and attempt whatever it takes to accomplish her parenting goals.

But I also feel extremely sick at the idea of renting out an Indian womb like it was a cheap hostel with a decent view of the Taj Mahal. The fact that this extremely intense medical procedure was 'examined' by Oprah with such one-sided, pro-family, pro-America bias was horrifying to watch. I think this is the most pissed I've been with Oprah since the James Frey episode.