“native” Narratives of Connectedness

In the winter of 1995, James Austin beat his infant son, Jonathan, to death. Jonathan was borne of a surrogate mother, Phyllis Huddleston, who had met James Austin only once. ¹ The unusual circumstances surrounding this murder merited a sensationalistic front page article in the Philadelphia Inquirer: “Two strangers—James Alan Austin and Phyllis Ann Huddleston—were united in the most coldly intimate way to create a baby by technology, and are now bound up in a uniquely modern family tragedy” (“The 2 Who Created Life That Was Taken,” Jan. 22, 1995:1). The article insinuates that technology has interfered with the way families should properly be formed; it seems that the blame for this child’s death should rest with the practice of surrogacy and not with the man who committed the murder. ² Unsurprisingly, those directly involved with surrogacy have a significantly different understanding of the role of technology in this practice than the one put forth by the Philadelphia Inquirer.