Gabrielle Union is opening up about using a surrogate to welcome her and Dwyane Wade’s daughter, Kaavia, in 2018.
In a Thursday interview with Marie Claire, the actor and advocate reflected on the process and why, at the time, it felt less like a medical solution and more like a personal defeat.
“It felt like failure. My body failed,” Union said. “It just felt like such a fucking public humiliation.”
Back in 2016, a doctor told Union that her best chance at a successful pregnancy would be through surrogacy — a path she’s spoken about before and detailed extensively in her 2021 memoir, “You Got Anything Stronger.”
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She went on to describe surrogacy as feeling “like a cuckold,” watching another woman do something she desperately wanted to do herself — something her own body, as she then believed, had betrayed her in not being able to.
The emotional toll didn’t end there. Supporting the surrogate through pregnancy brought its own kind of pain — a daily reminder of what she once perceived as her own shortcomings.
When asked how she responded to people who take issue with surrogacy, Union responded: “First of all, nobody has the balls to say that shit to my face, so I don’t say shit because nobody’s said shit.”
Union added that adopting an “I don’t give a fuck attitude” has been key to navigating not just this journey, but life in general.
Before choosing surrogacy, Union seriously considered undergoing a grueling treatment that offered her only a 30% success rate of carrying a child to term — and would have taken a significant toll on her health.
“It was something my husband said that changed my mind,” she wrote. “I told him I wanted to try the drug. Dwyane was quiet, then said, ‘You’ve done enough.’”
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