The New Yorker:

A wealthy couple obtained dozens of children through surrogates. Did they want a family, or something else?

By Ava Kofman

1. The Surrogates

In the delicate jargon of the fertility industry, a woman who carries a child for someone else is said to be going on a “journey.” Kayla Elliott began hers in February, 2024, not long after she posted her information in a Facebook group dedicated to surrogacy. Elliott, who was twenty-six and lived in Corpus Christi, Texas, already had four children, but she was intrigued by the prospect of bearing another. She’d loved the natural rush of pregnancy. As a surrogate, she could earn money for her family while helping strangers start their own.

Within days, Elliott received a brief message from a coördinator at Mark Surrogacy, an agency in Los Angeles, who wanted to know if she was interested in working with a Chinese couple. When Elliott asked for more details, she was sent a dating-style profile. It featured a photo of a paunchy sixty-four-year-old, Guojun Xuan, with his arm draped around a woman identified as his wife, Silvia, who was thirty-six and had short-cropped black hair. They lived in Arcadia, an affluent city in L.A. County, and shared a daughter who, they said, longed for a sibling. “Our surrogate would be like our extended family,” the parents wrote. “We would want to be as close as the surrogate prefers, with as much interaction throughout the journey as possible.” Elliott was delighted.

To qualify for the job, Elliott underwent a series of medical screenings, including a psychological evaluation, in which she described herself as “outspoken, compassionate, bubbly, loving, giving, and flamboyant.” After losing about fifteen pounds to meet the weight requirement, she began the standard protocols: birth control to stabilize her menstrual cycle, followed by a round of hormonal injections to thicken her uterine lining. The goal was to give the family’s embryo—Guojun’s sperm and an anonymous donor’s egg—the best odds of sticking during the transfer, which was scheduled for July at Western Fertility Institute, a clinic in Los Angeles. As the date of the appointment drew near, Elliott told the agency she was disappointed that the couple hadn’t been in touch. In online support groups, she’d read about surrogates getting to know the so-called intended parents, or “I.P.s,” over coffee dates or on Zoom. But, whenever she’d expressed an interest in talking to Silvia and Guojun, the coördinator at Mark Surrogacy had told her they were “too busy.”

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