Aggregated News
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...
