This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Thursday, December 7th,

2023. I'm Caleb Brown.

Gestational surrogates are a godsend for many couples, but the process has

received widespread criticism.

Some critics say it's risky or exploitative.

Cato's Vanessa Brown Calder examines these criticisms in a new Cato briefing paper.

We spoke last week.

This may be too much information for listeners.

And Vanessa, if this is too much information, you let me know.

But you're going to have a baby pretty soon.

And so we are furiously trying to squeeze as much productivity out of you before the blessed

event of your child's arrival.

And before we started recording,

we were discussing the various costs

associated with giving birth and the whole gestational and childbirth process and how, you know, the costs are pretty lopsided when it comes to men and women and what their roles are

with children. I have three so I can attest that I feel guilty about how little relatively I have had to do and frankly

how little I could do to make a baby feel more comfortable or feed them or any number of other things,

especially in the early stages. And so people are generally pretty cognizant of the difficulties associated with being a parent,

especially being a new mom.

Yeah, I think that's that is one nice thing is that people generally if they've had experience right then they are sympathetic to the plight of a new mom or pregnant woman if they've been married to a pregnant woman if they've been in a

relationship with the pregnant woman if they've had a sibling or good friend who's been

pregnant then they tend to be sympathetic of that experience which is nice. It's really nice.

...