Last Friday, a photo of Lady Gaga wearing a baby on her chest hit the internet. The baby’s face, swaddled in off-white fabric, was blessedly blurred. Outlets like People rushed to confirm the news: the pop icon and her fiancé, Michael Polansky, had welcomed their first child. 

These early reports have yet to confirm how the couple welcomed their child, but the internet quickly decided that they used a surrogate. To be clear, there’s no real evidence this was the case. Photos taken of Lady Gaga in recent months don’t appear to show a visible baby bump, but that’s not unheard of with pregnancy. Even if she didn’t carry the child, they could have adopted. But despite not knowing for certain, social media platforms like X have been awash with viral posts about how Lady Gaga used a surrogate to have a baby, and the posts are overwhelmingly negative. 

This is not a new trend. Over the past few years, celebrities and influencers starting or growing families with the help of surrogates has become commonplace. Both Kim and Khloé Kardashian did it. Singer Meghan Trainor and her husband did it. So did YouTuber Shane Dawson and his husband. Girls creator Lena Dunham literally just announced her first child via surrogacy this morning. And each time, these high-profile figures have been the target of vicious hate, which is often straightforwardly homophobic and/or misogynistic, rooted in misinformation, and born from reactionary conservatism. 

Lately there’s been another twist: posters haranguing women like Lady Gaga over the assumed use of a surrogate are arguing that surrogacy is inherently antifeminist and exploitative, taking advantage of economically disadvantaged women’s bodies for the selfish pursuit of children that parents like her aren’t entitled to have. 

Here’s the thing about this argument: it ignores the reality of surrogacy in the United States. It denies women agency over their own bodies when they choose to become surrogates. And it’s actually rooted in deeply misogynistic ideas about who “deserves” children and what women having babies should entail. It also conveniently supports the ongoing conservative agenda to deny gay couples the ability to have children, enforce the “traditional” family ideal, and further erode women’s bodily autonomy. The corresponding policy goals to outlaw and limit commercial surrogacy in the U.S. wouldn’t empower women—in fact, they would only drive more business to the under-regulated international surrogacy industry that really does exploit women in the Global South.  

Mara, a 29-year-old mother in Texas, first thought about becoming a surrogate when her brother came out as trans. Rather than see her brother experience body dysmorphia during pregnancy, Mara offered to carry his child for him. After he decided he would rather pursue fostering or adopting a child in the future, Mara set her sights on a LGBTQ-friendly surrogacy agency. After creating a profile and matching with prospective parents, Mara officially became a gestational carrier (meaning the embryo—who is now a nearly 1-year-old baby—was not genetically related to her).

“I am a one and done mom, but I wasn’t sure if I was done being pregnant,” Mara told me. “So I gave birth back in December 2025 to the surrogate baby, and it was literally such an amazing experience.” If she were to do it again, Mara says she would stick with this family, who she stays in touch with. She’s even in the extended family group chat.

From the viral posts I’ve seen on X, it’s pretty obvious that a lot of the backlash to Lady Gaga—who again, has not actually confirmed if she worked with a surrogate—is rooted in the age-old sexism of basing a woman’s worth on whether she can naturally conceive and carry children. There are grids of images of other celebrity women pregnant, with captions like “pop stars who got pregnant and gave birth themselves [clapping emoji].” Other posts highlight celebrity women who adopted their children, acting like it’s automatically a better choice than surrogacy, even though adoption is fraught with ethical quagmires, too. (Notably, all of these posts are about assigning value to women for how they had children, even though most of them had husbands who were also involved in the decision-making.)

But the idea I’ve seen most frequently is that people who choose surrogacy are inherently supporting a misogynistic industry that financially preys on women and exploits their bodies. And that’s just not always true. In the modern American surrogacy industry, it’s especially misleading. 

“I can’t blame people for wanting to look out for women,” Mara says. When she saw the heated discourse around Lady Gaga and surrogacy, she started responding to people on X and sharing her perspective. But the responses she got were equally misinformed and outraged, denying Mara’s actual lived experience and those in the wider surrogacy community she’s now a part of.

“What I find so funny is the almost fake outrage and concern for women, and then the immediate speaking over a woman,” Mara says. “Do women have bodily autonomy or not? It doesn’t matter how you feel about what another woman does with her body. Just because you think something is icky or uncomfortable, doesn’t make it morally wrong.”

While exploitative forms of surrogacy that involve privileged Westerners hiring impoverished women in the Global South to carry their children for measly compensation, then abandoning them with little medical or financial support afterward, are well-documented, those dynamics are not the same in the commercial surrogacy industry in the U.S. And while there are surrogacy horror stories in the U.S. that have rightfully received media coverage—like a venture capitalist who sued and harassed her surrogate after her fetus died in utero, or the more recent custody battle involving an anti-abortion group flying a surrogate to Texas to avoid terminating the pregnancy—these still don’t reflect the typical surrogate’s experience.

Survey data collected from nearly 200 American surrogates by the organization SurrogateFirst suggests that most women who decide to do it actually have higher household incomes and more education than the national average. Nearly 9 out of 10 surrogates surveyed in 2023 were happy with the experience and would consider doing it again. A first-of-its-kind long-term study of surrogates’ mental health outcomes found that the vast majority of surrogates were happy and well-adjusted two decades after being hired to carry someone else’s child. And the vast majority of them are more motivated by altruism than money, though they still deserve compensation for what the process entails.

“I have my Bachelor’s, I have a great salary for the last eight years, and I still continue to carry babies because there’s something beautiful about watching a family heal from infertility,” says Ashley Mareko, a four-time surrogate and the Director of Partnerships and Community Development at SurrogateFirst. “When I first started, I was very embarrassed about the compensation, because I did it for the heart of wanting to help this family grow. And my intended mom, I remember her telling me, ‘No one is above each other.’ She financially had the means to help my family in our trajectory, I had the ability to carry her child, and we bettered each other’s lives.”

Some of the misconceptions around surrogacy stem from ignorance. Unlike the patriarchal dystopia in The Handmaid’s Tale, no one in the legal surrogacy industry is being forced into it. Aspiring surrogates pass through rigorous background checks, physical and psychological evaluations, and get to choose who they work with. And the relationship between the surrogate, the baby, and their parents is governed by contracts—typically a gestational carrier agreement followed by a pre-birth order that allows for the parents’ names to be on the birth certificate. The number one thing Mareko and Mara both say they wish people knew about surrogacy is that the baby they’re carrying isn’t their baby. They don’t feel ownership over the future child. Once they’re relinquished, the surrogate is happy to return to their regular life.

It’s also a commonly repeated myth that babies form psychological bonds to the person who carries them and are traumatized when raised by someone else; decades of studies show there is no significant difference in relationship outcomes between children carried by surrogates versus their biological parents. When high-profile parents who had children via surrogates post smiling photos from the hospital bed, they are often mocked and derided online for “pretending they gave birth,” despite research showing immediate skin-to-skin contact is beneficial in bonding these babies with their parents. And of course, many people don’t think gay men or infertile women or disabled people deserve to have children at all, which is typically rooted in blatant bigotry. 

In Lady Gaga’s case, it’s really none of our business how she had her baby, and given the response to other celebrities, it makes sense why she wouldn’t want to be forthcoming either way. She has also publicly documented her struggles with conditions like fibromyalgia, which could make pregnancy and childbirth even more painful, dangerous, and difficult. Many of the celebrity women who have relied on surrogacy to start or grow their families have similar conditions leading to high-risk pregnancies.

The surrogacy industry isn’t perfect—everyone I spoke to for this story said there is plenty of room for more regulation and improved practices. But that’s not going to happen if the entire industry is stigmatized, restricted, or banned. And when another high-profile woman welcomes a baby via surrogacy, we certainly don’t have to condemn her under the guise of protecting women.

“I think drama sells,” Mareko told me. “I think people make decisions for women like myself and have no idea what goes into this.”