Gabrielle Union explains why subrogation was felt as public humiliation

Gabrielle Union is opening on the use of a substitute to welcome her and Dwyane Wade’s daughter, Kaavia, in 2018.

In a Thursday interview with Marie Claire, the actor and defender reflected on the process and why, at that time, he felt less as a medical solution and more as a personal defeat.

“He felt like a failure. My body failed,” Union said. “He simply felt like a damn public humiliation.”

In 2016, a doctor told Union that his best chance of a successful pregnancy would be through subrogation, a path he has spoken before and is widely detailed in his 2021 memories, “you have something stronger.”

Monica Schipper through Getty Images

He continued to describe the subrogation as he feels “like a cuckold”, seeing another woman to do something he wanted to do desperately, something that her own body, as she believed, had betrayed her by not being able to do it.

The emotional toll did not end there. Supporting the substitute during pregnancy brought his own type of pain, a daily reminder of what he once perceived as his own deficiencies.

When asked how he responded to people who take problems with the subrogation, Union replied: “First, nobody has the balls to say that shit on my face, so I don’t say shit because no one has said shit.”

Union added that adopting a “I do not give myself a shit attitude” has been key to navigating not only this trip, but in general.

Before choosing the subrogation, Union seriously considered undergoing exhausting treatment that offered only a success rate of 30% to take a term child, and would have significantly affected their health.

“It was something that my husband said he changed his mind,” he wrote. “I told him that I wanted to try the drug. Dwyane was quiet and then said: ‘You did enough.'”