Martiza Baptiste, Contributing Writer
While studying in the library with friends during my freshman year, we noticed someone had written the black market prices for different organs on a whiteboard — $160,000 for a liver and $200,000 for a kidney.
We laughed and joked about paying off our tuition by selling an organ or two. It was just a joke — but it was rooted in a very real fantasy of coming out of school debt-free.
While most students have not had to resort to selling vital organs of course, many are compelled to sell their bodies in other legal and more socially acceptable ways to make ends meet.
Donating plasma and eggs are among the more common routes students take to ease their financial burdens. In dire circumstances, some have been recorded making multiple donations a week to qualify for a cash bonus, according to a study done by Georgetown University.
Plasma and egg donations are often marketed as altruistic ways to help others, but they also come with substantial compensation. The underlying medical risks are rarely advertised — omitting dangers like nerve damage, infertility and even death — and desperate patients are left making uninformed decisions about their bodies for money.
For some students, particularly those facing extreme financial pressure, surrogacy becomes a last-ditch effort to achieve some sort of economic stability. Although less common due to its physically and emotionally taxing nature, legal complexities and lengthy commitment, surrogacy offers a substantial financial incentive to those looking to pay off their student loans.
This trend has dark implications. Students deciding to carry someone else’s child for money shows just how dire things can be for young people with the rising cost of tuition and the devaluation of a college degree.
Surrogacy has grown in popularity in recent years, with celebrities like Lily Collins, Kim Kardashian and Chrissy Teigen opening up about their decision to use this form of conception. While many have spoken publicly about their own health struggles or experiences with infertility, few seem to opt for adoption.
Unlike donating eggs and plasma or selling your organs, there is no limit to how many times a person can be a surrogate. Surrogates are compensated, on average, $60,000 per birth. This sort of money-to-service ratio raises serious ethical concerns. Can we truly rely on the consent of the surrogate if there is a potential danger of financial coercion?
Pregnancy takes a massive physical and emotional toll on a person. It can impact long-term health, mental well-being and employment. And yet, we are allowing the surrogacy industry to put a price tag on labor.
This phenomenon isn’t anything new. Surrogacy is only the modern version of a much older arrangement — the wet nurse.
Historically, wealthy white families employed poor women of color to breastfeed and care for their children, according to a study done in the Journal of Southern History.
In the American South, enslaved Black women were forced to serve as wet nurses, a cruel tradition that we see echoes of today.
Today, surrogacy offers a more legally sanitized version of this same dynamic. The core remains unchanged — the wealthy exploit us while the working class bears the physical and emotional cost.
Our bodies are not vessels for the 1%, and we should not allow our autonomy to be bought. While we can advocate for ourselves and our bodies, exploitation is the only way for some people to stay afloat. Sometimes to stay alive, our lifestyle choices must go against our ideals.
As students, we shouldn’t be forced to choose between a lifetime of debt or bodily exploitation. We deserve an education that doesn’t ask us to potentially sell our bodies to afford it. Until serious changes are made, the price of a degree may be far greater than just tuition.