Surrogate Prime CEO Wenny Chen and Autumn Anderson in Anderson’s third surrogacy.
TRAVERSE CITY — When pop star Meghan Trainor announced this year that she’d welcomed her third child via surrogate, she unintentionally ignited a firestorm in comment sections across the internet. The singer’s emotion-fueled photos and gratitude for her surrogate drew a flood of online criticism, including accusations that surrogacy amounts to “renting” a womb and exploiting poor women.
Two northern Michigan women who have lived the reality of surrogacy — one who has carried three babies for three families, and another preparing for her first journey — say the backlash misses what the process actually looks like — medical screening, legal contracts, financial safeguards and a decision rooted in autonomy.
“I don’t think it’s preying on poor women because first off, to be a surrogate you need to be financially stable,” said 24-year-old Autumn Anderson of Traverse City, who is three months postpartum after completing her third surrogacy. “You do have to travel and sometimes you need to get reimbursed for some items that are big ticket items. You need to be financially stable.”
Noelle Vaughan, 36, of Traverse City, said she was “really sad” watching Trainor get dragged for a decision that may have been medically necessary, and for a moment of bonding that many parents share regardless of who gives birth.
“It doesn’t matter that she didn’t carry the baby,” Vaughan said. “That is her baby.”
The backlash Trainor faced may feel distant, but for women in Michigan, the conversation around surrogacy has become increasingly local and newly relevant.
Michigan’s legal shift and the moment it felt personal
In 2024, Michigan repealed its longstanding ban on compensated surrogacy. The Assisted Reproduction and Surrogacy Parentage Act took effect in 2025 and legalized paid surrogacy and created new legal framework for parentage and assisted reproduction.
And for Vaughan, news of that change didn’t come through headlines or press releases. It showed up on her Facebook feed.
“All of a sudden my social media was getting flooded with these ads, ‘Have you considered surrogacy?'” she said.
In fact, she had.
The idea of surrogacy entered the picture when Vaughan’s brother-in-law and his husband decided they wanted a baby of their own and started searching for a surrogate. She loved being pregnant, had relatively easy pregnancies, and knew her own family was complete.
“It was always just kind of there,” she said. “Like, I would love to be pregnant again and experience that again. I think it’s just absolutely beautiful.”
The legal change and the sudden visibility of surrogacy pushed that quiet thought to the front of her mind. After months of seeing the ads, Vaughan said she began researching agencies, talking with other women who had already been surrogates and realizing how feasible it could be for her family.
“It’s a lot of working moms who are doing it,” she said. “And I have such a flexible schedule being remote. It’s like, ‘Oh my gosh, I could do this easily.'”
‘My womb is empty:’ Anderson’s three journeys
Anderson said she first looked into surrogacy at 20, about a year after having her daughter. She remembers being introduced to the concept as a child, then revisiting it once she experienced motherhood herself.
“My daughter is literally my everything,” she said. “I love her so much and I just can’t believe other people have to try so hard and can’t even carry a baby for themselves. I wanted to help someone achieve that happiness.”
After her first surrogacy delivery, she said she almost immediately knew she wanted to do it again, not because it was easy, but because of the moment at the finish line.
“After seeing the parents’ faces during the delivery, just seeing that connection,” she said. “They were emotional. I was crying. They were crying. Everyone was crying. And it was just such a special moment. I was like, ‘I have to do this again.'”
She described the birth-room experience as adrenaline and emotion at once.
“Oh my God, it’s a rush,” she said. “Right when you see the baby come out, you get this burst of energy and they hand (the baby) to the parents, everyone’s crying, and it’s just a big moment emotionally and physically. You just feel so high, like you could do anything.”
Her three surrogacies were for three different families, and she said the level of contact afterward varied, from occasional holiday check-ins to more regular communication.
But not every match ends smoothly. Her most recent journey, she said, was particularly stressful toward the end.
She has decided she is done carrying pregnancies herself, not because something catastrophic happened, but because the cumulative mental and physical toll became too heavy.
“My last pregnancy that I just had was more of a mental toll on me,” she said. “It definitely took more of a toll physically and I don’t know if that’s because I’m older or it was my fourth pregnancy, but it definitely took more of a toll and that’s what made me decide this was my last surrogacy.”
Still, Anderson said she is not leaving surrogacy behind. She now works from home for an agency as an intake director.
“My body’s like, ‘No more,'” she said. “But no, I have to stay in the field of surrogacy. I have to keep matching families and helping dreams come true. It just feels like this is my purpose in life.”
‘There’s no way to really get ahead:’ Vaughan’s why
Vaughan, who works remotely in logistics and supply chain, said she is in the early stages of the process — undergoing medical testing, reviewing legal contracts and preparing for embryo transfer if she is cleared.
For Vaughan, compensated surrogacy offers a way to ease a significant financial burden, including paying down her own student loan debt and planning for her sons’ future education.
“I do have two master’s degrees. I’m in a lot of student loan debt,” she said. “And living in Traverse City, we’re just middle class. There’s no way to really get ahead.”
Vaughan tied that urgency to her childhood, which she described as marked by poverty and instability — circumstances she said her family did their best to navigate — and a determination that her children will not grow up with the same fear.
“I just remember being just so degraded and humiliated at school,” she said. “It’s like, ‘I don’t want them to have this life.'”
Backlash and the ‘poor women’ myth
Both women said the response to Trainor’s announcement exposed common misconceptions about surrogacy, particularly the belief that it is inherently coercive or driven by financial desperation. Anderson said that is not how the screening works or what she sees in the surrogate community.
“You can’t be on any government assistance or anything like that,” she said. “So it’s really not a quick buck. You’re not preying on poor women because they can’t be poor.”
She also pointed out what often gets lost in comment sections — surrogacy involves informed consent and legal agreements.
“There’s a contract,” she said. “Everyone signs the contract. Everyone knows what’s involved in a pregnancy.”
Vaughan said the backlash struck her as both cruel and illogical, especially criticism of Trainor doing skin-to-skin contact with her newborn.
“I saw the photo where it looks like she’s doing skin-to-skin and just her emotion,” Vaughan said. “That is biologically her baby.”
Risks and the protections that exist
Both women emphasized that pregnancy is never risk-free and that the decision must be weighed as seriously as any other major medical choice, particularly for mothers with children at home.
“You can lose your whole uterus,” Anderson said. “I could lose my life. We took that into consideration.”
Vaughan said her husband’s first response was fear: What if something happens to you?
But she said agencies build in safeguards, including life insurance.
“The agencies, they do have a life insurance policy for the surrogate mothers,” she said. “It’s a $1 million policy. So if something did happen, that would go to my husband and my family.”
Misconceptions closer to home
Online backlash is loud, but both women said some of the most persistent misinformation comes from everyday conversations, the kind that reveal how little people understand about the medical basics.
Vaughan said a family member once asked whether surrogacy meant “sleeping with somebody else for money and having their baby.”
“And I just looked at him, like my jaw dropped,” she said.
She also said people are often confused about whether she will be genetically related to the baby. She will not be.
For Anderson, she sometimes hears the comment that surrogacy is confusing or traumatizing for the surrogate’s own children.
“My daughter is not traumatized at all,” Anderson said. “She knew exactly what I was doing. There was no confusion about it.”
What they want people to understand
Anderson said surrogacy is often misunderstood, and she wishes people understood how much time, patience and medical work the process involves.
“Injections. It’s a lot. Pills, injections,” she said. “It’s a lot on the body, definitely.”
Her biggest advice for would-be surrogates: Take time choosing the right agency.
“Please research the right agency if you’re going the agency route. Some people go independent, but I don’t recommend that just because there’s a lot of legwork, there’s a lot of stuff that you can miss. Agency to me is everything.”
She regrets only taking two months to research.
“I got lucky having perfect journeys, but a lot of people don’t have perfect journeys,” she said. “So I’m like, “Please research everything.”
Vaughan, preparing for embryo transfer later this spring, said she hopes people can hold two truths at once: Surrogacy can be meaningful and also financially helpful, without being exploitative by default.
“I’m just trying to get my debt taken care of, so that way, I can take care of my own children,” she said.
And as comment sections reacting to Trainor’s announcement illustrated, both women said the debate often overlooks the reality of surrogacy and that it involves informed adults making personal family decisions.
“They were emotional. I was crying. They were crying. Everyone was crying. And it was just such a special moment. I was like, ‘I have to do this again.'” Autumn Anderson
