Surrogacy Biomarkets in India: Stratified Reproduction and Intersectionality

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Abstract

Feminists have noted the ways in which certain power relations in stratified reproduction empower some people to nurture and reproduce while disempowering others (Colen in Conceiving the new world order: the global politics of reproduction. University of California Press, Berkeley, pp. 78–102, 1995; Ginsburg and Rapp in Conceiving the new world order: the global politics of reproduction. University of California Press, Berkeley, 1995; Rapp in Soc Res 78:693–718, 2011). Transnational surrogacy in India reflects many of these inequities; disparities in gender, race, class, and location place some women’s reproductive projects above others (DasGupta and DasGupta in Globalization and transnational surrogacy in India: outsourcing life. Lexington Books, Lanham, 2014; Gupta in Eur J Women Stud 13:23–38, 2006, Gupta in IJFAB: Int J Fem Approach Bioeth 5:25–51, 2012; Pande in Reprod Biomed Online 23:618–625, 2011). This chapter examines the experience of surrogate mothers from a feminist perspective by applying Colen’s (Conceiving the new world order: the global politics of reproduction. University of California Press, Berkeley, pp. 78–102, 1995) stratified reproduction as a framework to understand how the reproductive tasks of bearing and rearing children is differentially experienced, valued, and rewarded according to inequalities and whether these inequalities structured by socio-economic and political status lead to reproductive/social injustice and human rights violation. Drawing on my fieldwork, the chapter describes the socio-economic background and motivation of surrogate mothers, the role of the medical practitioners, and the embodied surrogacy experience of surrogate mothers and intended parents with reference to the inequalities raised in the previous chapter.

Keywords

Stratified reproduction Ethonology of surrogacy practice Pregnant embodiment Intersectionality of poverty-gender-race 
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References

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Copyright information

© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2018

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.Department of Anthropology, South Asia InstituteHeidelberg UniversityHeidelbergGermany

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