OPEN CALL | WELLNESS
5 min
The Womb Queen of White Gum Valley
Liam Blackford
Liam Blackford
Liam Blackford is a queer novelist working on Whadjuk Noongar country, writing fiction in which norms regarding gender, sexuality and childbirth have dramatically evolved. To queer people like Liam, commercial surrogacy is one major pathway to parenthood, but is today afflicted with stigma, exploitation and risk.
This is a fictional story
Rexelle Wong Latouff, currently pregnant for the fifteenth time, is one of the most sought-after professional surrogates in the world. An interview with the woman whose womb costs more per hour than most of the country's top lawyers
"The most valuable thing you can offer to the world is yourself," Rexelle Wong Latouff announces to a packed lecture theatre, from behind the lectern of the Fatima Payman Lecture Theatre at Edith Cowan University in central Perth. For the last hour, she has been addressing close to 500 first year students in the university's surrogacy and reproductive services program, who have listened intently to the stories and insights from her years of professional experience. She ends the address not with her own words, but those from a letter she received after completing her first ever job: "I wanted for years to be a mother and was ready to grieve my dream forever. But then we found you. You have changed my life, you have given me a family. No words will ever be enough to express my gratitude for this. Please consider me always not just a customer, but a friend." When she closes with thanks to the crowd, she is sent off with enthusiastic applause.
Afterwards, I speak to some of the students lining up, hopeful to meet Wong Latouff. One of them is a surrogacy student on a government scholarship, who came to the lecture with a group of her friends and classmates. "Rexelle is so incredible," she tells me, "she is an amazing businesswoman, and such a beautiful soul!" Another student is studying adult hospitality and planned to be an escort after graduation, but is now considering switching to surrogacy and reproductive services. "There's a myth that having children makes a woman weak," she says, "but Rexelle is proof that it actually makes you powerful."
Wong Latouff, 37, is a professional surrogate, currently pregnant for the fifteenth time, due to deliver just before Kambarang this year. She is ranked #15 on this year's West Australian Financial Review Rich List of the nation's richest, up from #23 last year. She is one of WA's most successful commercial surrogacy operators and certainly one of the most expensive; by our calculations, she charges more for her womb by the hour than the combined hourly charge out rate of the fee-earning staff of national corporate law firms Nolan Newton Davidson Rich and Darcy Tsomba. When we share with her the publicly available data we used for this measure, she argues we are way off. "My fees more than doubled after that bub," she says, "and that was four bubs ago."
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Wong Latouff shows me around the home she shares with her husband Viv and two dogs in White Gum Valley, just east of Fremantle in south metro Perth. They moved into the Federation-era cottage shortly after their marriage twelve years ago, and two years ago completed a comprehensive renovation, the centrepiece of which is the enormous, glossy kitchen. "Anyone who's ever been pregnant knows the importance of good food," Wong Latouff says. A private chef comes twice a week, but most meals are prepared by Wong Latouff herself. All ingredients come from a select roster of providers in the nation's south west, from a couple of local farmer's markets, "or from my backyard!" Wong Latouff claims. "But it has to be organic, no hormones, no GMO, nothing packaged, nothing artificial. It can never have touched plastic or been in a plane." She has me try a scoop of a burnt butter lavender ice cream that she made herself. I ask for seconds, but she urges me to wait. "Let the fats and proteins enter your bloodstream. Let it satisfy you before you demand more! It doesn't matter if it's ice cream or spinach – no food is healthy if we're not truly listening to our bodies."
Wong Latouff informs me that she keeps her lifestyle as simple as possible. "I take the dogs to the beach every day," she says, "nothing heals like ocean water." She takes one meeting a week with her four-person team (consisting of her manager, accountant, lawyer and social media officer), insisting to them that it not exceed one hour. To minimize her intake of what she calls "psychic pollutants," she doesn't use a smartphone, avoids the internet and never reads nor watches the news. "Viv will tell me what's going on, if it's so important that I need to know."
Wong Latouff and husband Viv have no children of their own, however Wong Latouff does not consider herself childless. "I always say, when I'm carrying a client's child, it's my child and I am its mother. That's how I hold myself in relation to the child."
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Commercial surrogacy has been legalized in WA since the early days of independence from the Australian Federation and Commonwealth. While other nations are playing catch up, WA's surrogacy industry is one of the world's most mature and diversified, and while the domestic market is strong, the industry's export volume is also one of the world's highest. As part of the country's ‘nation building' policies, basic surrogacy services are available to citizens at low to nil cost as part of the public health system, but private services are also available, with terms negotiable between provider and customer.
Euthanasia Institute Director of Research Dr. Antoinette Bray Loxley commented "there are providers at almost every price point. What Rexelle does is premium, or you could even say ultra-premium. She is definitely at the top end of the market."
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"Having a baby has always felt like the most natural thing in the world to me," Wong Latouff says, "I knew from early on in my life that it was something I was always meant to do."
A high academic achiever throughout school, Wong Latouff was a scholarship student at Curtin University's surrogacy program, graduating at age 21 and commencing her first surrogacy soon thereafter. Her first two surrogacies were handled by a government agent, after which she made the decision to go private. Her clients cannot be identified, but according to Wong Latouff, "they were mostly local families in WA to start, and then as I got more established, I started getting business abroad. The international market understands that our relaxed way of life in Western Australia is perfect for expecting women."
After a six-baby deal for one client in China ("a beautiful family that I still keep in touch with," she reports), Wong Latouff moved to open tender on the Seemee superapp platform, allowing potential clients to bid for the next surrogacy once available. She still operates on the platform: @rexelle has over 3 million followers, and those interested in bidding are invited to contact her manager for guidance on price. When I show her profile to her on my phone, she laughs and waves it away, protesting that "Gerry and Ayana handle all of that."
All her IVF procedures are handled at a private clinic that, despite my pleas on behalf of the very curious public, Wong Latouff declines to identify. She is not an egg provider and never has been: "the client always supplies," she informs, "though I often recommend preferred suppliers whose product I feel is the best to work with."
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In May this year, Wong Latouff joined the board of Enterjing, the Welshpool-based fertility and reproductive medicine company. As a board member, Wong Latouff hopes to be a voice for pregnant persons. "I want to help change the narrative," she tells me. "We tend to focus on the risks and possible complications of pregnancy, as if it's this inherently dangerous thing. If a woman experiences a smooth pregnancy, we act as if she escaped from a monster, as if she's lucky to still be in one piece. Let's be honest, a lot of that just comes down to lingering medical misogyny. Why don't we talk about, as a society, how women who have been pregnant have lower rates of breast, ovarian and endometrial cancer, dementia, cardiovascular, autoimmune disease? I'm the healthiest, happiest person I know – why don't we talk more about that?"
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