Sun, sand and surrogates
        
            By Natalie Stechyson, 
                Calgary Herald
             | 09. 30. 2013
        
                    
                                    
                    
                                                                                                                                    
                                                                            
                              
    
  
  
    
  
          
  
      
    
            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...
 
       
 
  
 
    
    
  
   
                        
                                                                                
                 
                                                    
                            
                                  
    
  
  
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