In a cover story for the New York Times Magazine, Alex Kuczynski wrote about her experience in paying another woman to bear her (and her husband’s) child. It is not a particularly insightful piece—she never even gets around to examining her reasons for rejecting adoption—but the intrinsic interest of the subject matter got me to read it. I’d be more interested in reading a surrogate’s take on these transactions, but I suppose the Times is less likely to have a surrogate than a buyer already on staff.

Finally, one cannot (well, I cannot) help wondering whether the story told in the pictures that accompany the piece, including a plantation-style shot with a “baby nurse,” is more true than the one in the text.