Actress Jamie Chung Chose Surrogacy Over Pregnancy Because She "Didn't Want To Lose Opportunities" In Her Acting Career

Jamie Chung originally rose to fame because of her role in a reality TV show called The Real World: San Diego. She's been on a few spin-off series after The Real World and has also found some acting roles since then. She married Bryan Greenberg in 2015, and they just welcomed a pair of twins last October. Chung opened up to Today about her choice to do surrogacy rather than give birth to her boys.

Jamie Chung Chose Surrogacy over Pregnancy Because She "Didn't Want To Lose Opportunities"

It's always an exciting time when a couple expands their family by getting pregnant. Chung knew she and her husband wanted children, but she was afraid of what might happen to her career if she took time to get pregnant and give birth.

“I was terrified of becoming pregnant. I was terrified of putting my life on hold for two-plus years. In my industry, it feels like you’re easily forgotten if you don’t work within the next month of your last job. Things are so quickly paced in what we do,” Chung said. “So it’s a compromise that we made together as a couple.”

Chung was open about freezing her eggs in 2019, but she chose to keep the surrogacy decision quiet because she believes there's a stigma around this way of having children.

“I think there’s a little bit of shame. It’s still not a very common thing, and we weren’t ready for judgment,” she said. “We really just did it to protect ourselves. We announced things when we were ready to."

“People probably think, 'Oh, she's so vain. She didn't want to get pregnant,' and it's much more complicated than that. For me, personally, and I will leave it at this, it’s like, I worked my ass off my entire life to get where I am,” she continued. “I don’t want to lose opportunities. I don’t want to be resentful.”

Last year, after the twins were born via surrogate, she told her fans that she was struggling with postpartum depression. If you're confused about how this might be possible for a woman who did not give birth, you're not the only one. Pretending as if you're having difficulty with postpartum depression when someone else gave birth to your twins is a slap in the face to the women who truly suffer from postpartum depression after experiencing their own pregnancy and birth.

It's disappointing at best to send the message to women that giving birth to your own child will ruin your life and career so much that the only solution is to rent out another woman's womb.