Why Use Surrogates?

"The Vorkons haven't taken us into their confidence," Ulrike says with dry humour. "But we've come up with a couple of theories. One is that some Vorkon women might want to be mothers, but just don't want to be bothered with pregnancy. Humans are cheap substitutes. Another - perhap more likely - idea is that the Vorkons could have been modifying themselves genetically for a few generations, and in pursuit of some desirable genetic traits have managed to botch things to the point where they mostly can't safely carry a baby to term. Using humans as surrogates is one attempt to fix the problem. Actually humanity has that problem too, but in a far milder form. Over millions of years we've developed very large heads in relation to our body size, so that human women find giving birth far more arduous than most animal species do. But as that's only a problem at the going into labour stage, if necessary it can be avoided by a caesarian section, and both mother and baby are usually fine. The problem for Vorkon women must arise much earlier in their pregnancy, when the baby wouldn't yet be viable without a surrogate - or an incubator, maybe, but perhaps surrogates are cheaper than building and maintaining a huge number of incubators would be."

"I see. Thank you for such a detailed answer to my question."

1. I ask another question.
2. The conversation turns to other things.

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