Again: what were they thinking?

The Craigslist website is the internet equivalent of the community notice board outside the supermarket.  It's the kind of place where people advertise their book club, a used couch for sale, or babysitting services.  Because it's a free website where people can post advertisements anonymously, it's home to various creeps, perverts and scam artists.  The last time I heard about Craigslist it was in a connection with a man who was murdering hookers that he found there.

In short, I'd be loathe to buy even a second hand mattress from there.  So why would you use it to find birthing services?

Yet we have these people, who advertised on an American city version of Craigslist for someone to act as a surrogate mother.  And shock, horror- it turned to shit. They didn't even bother to go and meet the person to find out if they were legit, instead relying on emails to establish the intimate bond between the genetic parents and the birth mother.  Then, suitably convinced that the kind of person who responds to an internet ad for a birthing service must be on the up-and-up, they proceed to send expensive medical shipments of genetic material across the Pacific.  Plus of course the fee for rental of the uterus, an undisclosed sum but if they're willing to drop almost 3-and-a-half grand just on a jizz container, then it's probably a hefty amount.

An expensive, and intensely personal process, bidding for the services of someone to give them a child, and they're not even bothering to meet the candidate.  I don't think you can even get a job at McDonalds without going in for an interview.