Recent photos of Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban show the couple smiling at the cameras, having just shared the news that they, the social or commissioning parents, have a secretly conceived new daughter Faith, thanks to the implanted pregnancy of a gestational carrier.
In the many attempts to make ethical sense of this news, public response has ranged from condemnation of “unnatural” practices, to a celebration of reproductive freedom of choice. We struggle — I know I do — for a way to make sense of what surrogacy relationships mean for adults and for children. In the bird world of course, things are more straightforward. Nicole and Keith would be cuckoos, brood parasites, who lay their eggs in another’s nest, for another bird to sit on.