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Motherloading: Inside the Surrogacy Boom
Ashley Mareko on the beach near where her RV is parked in Mission Bay, San Diego. (Ariana Drehsler for The Free Press)
‘It’s almost like a heterosexual relationship. I’m the provider. And this other woman that I met on Facebook is staying at home and having my kid for me.’
By Suzy Weiss
04.11.23 — Culture and Ideas
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Ashley Mareko was built for pregnancy. “I have great hips,” she told me over the phone. 

Mareko, 38, a Hawaii native who lives with her husband and teenage daughter in their RV near the beach in San Diego, heard about gestational surrogacy—where she would grow someone else’s baby in her own womb—at a Bible study group. “I thought it was the coolest thing…

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Suzy Weiss
Suzy Weiss is a co-founder and reporter for The Free Press. Before that, she worked as a features reporter at the New York Post. There, she covered the internet, culture, dating, dieting, technology, and Gen Z. Her work has also appeared in Tablet, the New York Daily News, The Wall Street Journal, and McSweeney's Internet Tendency, among others.
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