Sun, sand and surrogates

This is part of the Michelle Lang Fellowship series, which this year takes a look at the issues facing would-be Canadian parents who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer. The complete series can be found here.

Miriam the surrogate is wearing four estrogen patches across her lower abdomen and a Santa Muerte religious idol on a delicate chain around her neck.

Before she moved to the resort town of Cancun to live in a small house teeming with eight other Mexican women preparing to carry babies for international couples, Galicia was a police officer in Toluca. She and her fellow officers believed Santa Muerte - the Saint of Death - would protect them.

So Galicia, 35, still wears the Saint of Death as she works in her new job as a vessel of life, preparing her body to carry an embryo belonging to an HIV-positive gay couple from the United States.

"Policing is very dangerous and my children need me. I would rather do this," the single mother of three says in Spanish, rolling the pendant on her...