Transnational Reproduction

Transnational Reproduction traces the relationships among Western aspiring parents, Indian surrogates, and egg donors from around the world. In the early 2010s India was one of the top providers of surrogacy services in the world. Drawing on interviews with commissioning parents, surrogates, and egg donors as well as doctors and family members, Daisy Deomampo argues that while the surrogacy industry in India offers a clear example of “stratified reproduction”—the ways in which political, economic, and social forces structure the conditions under which women carry out physical and social reproductive labor—it also complicates that concept as the various actors in this reproductive work struggle to understand their relationships to one another. The book shows how these actors make sense of their connections, illuminating the ways in which kinship ties are challenged, transformed, or reinforced in the context of transnational gestational surrogacy. The volume revisits the concept of stratified reproduction in ways that offer a more robust and nuanced understanding of race and power as ideas about kinship intersect with structures of inequality. It demonstrates that while reproductive actors share a common quest for conception, they make sense of family in the context of globalized assisted reproductive technologies in very different ways. In doing so, Deomampo uncovers the specific racial reproductive imaginaries that underpin the unequal relations at the heart of transnational surrogacy.

Transnational surrogacy – the creation of babies across borders – has become big business. Globalization, reproductive technologies, new family formations and rising infertility are combining to produce a 'quiet revolution' in social and medical ethics and the nature of parenthood. Whereas much of the current scholarship has focused on the US and India, this groundbreaking anthology offers a far wider perspective. Featuring contributions from over thirty activists and scholars from a range of countries and disciplines, this collection offers the first genuinely international study of transnational surrogacy. Its innovative bottom-up approach, rooted in feminist perspectives, gives due prominence to the voices of those most affected by the global surrogacy chain, namely the surrogate mothers, donors, prospective parents and the children themselves. Through case studies ranging from Israel to Mexico, the book outlines the forces that are driving the growth of transnational surrogacy, as well as its implications for feminism, human rights, motherhood and masculinity.

Third party conception is a growing phenomenon and provokes a burgeoning range of ethical, legal and social questions. What are the rights of donors, recipients and donor conceived children? How are these reproductive technologies regulated? How is kinship understood within these new family forms? Written by specialists from three different continents, Transnationalising Reproduction examines a broad range of issues concerning kinship and identity, citizenship and regulation, and global markets of reproductive labour; including gamete donation and gestational surrogacy. Indeed, this book seeks to highlight how reproductive technologies not only makes possible new forms of kinship and family formations, but also how these give rise to new, ethical, political and legal dilemmas about parenthood as well as new modes of discrimination and a re-distribution of medical risks. It also thoroughly investigates the ways in which a commodification of reproductive tissue and labour affects the practices, representations and gendered self-understandings of gamete donors, fertility patients and intended parents in different parts of the world. With a broad geographical scope, Transnationalising Reproduction offers new empirical and theoretical perspectives on third-party conception and demonstrates the need for more transnational approaches to third-party reproduction. This volume will appeal to postgraduate students and postdoctoral researchers interested in fields such as Gender Studies, Health Care Sciences, Reproductive Technology and Medical Sociology.

Surrogacy is IndiaÕs new form of outsourcing, as couples from all over the world hire Indian women to bear their children for a fraction of the cost of surrogacy elsewhere with little to no government oversight or regulation. In the first detailed ethnography of IndiaÕs surrogacy industry, Amrita Pande visits clinics and hostels and speaks with surrogates and their families, clients, doctors, brokers, and hostel matrons in order to shed light on this burgeoning business and the experiences of the laborers within it. From recruitment to training to delivery, PandeÕs research focuses on how reproduction meets production in surrogacy and how this reflects characteristics of IndiaÕs larger labor system. PandeÕs interviews prove surrogates are more than victims of disciplinary power, and she examines the strategies they deploy to retain control over their bodies and reproductive futures. While some women are coerced into the business by their families, others negotiate with clients and their clinics to gain access to technologies and networks otherwise closed to them. As surrogates, the women Pande meets get to know and make the most of advanced medical discoveries. They traverse borders and straddle relationships that test the boundaries of race, class, religion, and nationality. Those who focus on the inherent inequalities of IndiaÕs surrogacy industry believe the practice should be either banned or strictly regulated. Pande instead advocates for a better understanding of this complex labor market, envisioning an international model of fair-trade surrogacy founded on openness and transparency in all business, medical, and emotional exchanges.

Collection uses ethnographies of globalization to explore the consequences of interactions between global processes and national structures on human reproduction and reproductive health in a range of contexts.

As commercial surrogacy in India dominates public conversations around reproduction, new kinds of families, and changing trends in globalization, its lived realities become an important aspect of emerging research. This book maps the way in which in vitro fertilization (IVF) specialists, surrogacy agents, commissioning couples, surrogate mothers, and egg donors contribute to the understanding of interpersonal relations in the process of commercial surrogacy. In this book, Majumdar draws from a context that is enmeshed in the local–global politics of reproduction, including the ways in which the transnational commercial surrogacy arrangement has led to an ongoing debate regarding ethics and morality in the sphere of reproductive rights. In weaving together the diverse, often conflicting experiences of individuals and families, the transnational commercial surrogacy arrangement comes alive as a process mirroring larger societal anxieties with reference to technological interventions in intimate relationships. It is these anxieties, dilemmas, and their negotiations to which the book is addressed.

In the thirty-five years since the first +test-tube baby,[&½] in-vitro fertilization and other methods of reproductive assistance have become a common aspect of family life and medicine in affluent nations and, increasingly, throughout the world. How do persons seeking treatment, donors, and medical experts make use of these reproductive technologies? How in crossing borders between nations do they manage to evade legal and bioethical regulations? And how do they make sense of these new modes of making kinship against the backdrop of diverse world-views and social settings? --

This book interrogates the politics of sexual and reproductive rights from a transnational feminist perspective. Taking an intersectional and interdisciplinary approach, the book provides the reader with a nuanced and in depth understanding of the role that forces of globalization have played in women's sexual and reproductive lives in the 21st century. The book begins with an examination of the significance of transnational women's health movement(s) as a response to the convergence of social, political, and economic forces unique to the current globalized era. Subsequent chapters examine these forces as they play out in socially and geographically specific locations. The book is organized into four thematic sections: the continuing impacts of colonization on women's bodies and sexual and reproductive health; interactions between the State, the law, and sexual and reproductive rights; the ways in which migration shapes women's sexual and reproductive health experiences; and the engagement with transnational politics by women's health organizers. Within these themes, case studies of Ireland, India, Senegal, Colombia, Mexico, Uganda, and the United States are highlighted. In addition, specific issues such as sex selection and son preference, the criminalization of abortion, mental and physical health needs of migrant women, indigenous rights, and population control and family planning policies are tackled. Contributors include activists working on the ground as well as scholars and researchers. engagement with transnational politics by women's health organizers. Within these themes, case studies of Ireland, India, Senegal, Colombia, Mexico, Uganda, and the United States are highlighted. In addition, specific issues such as sex selection and son preference, the criminalization of abortion, mental and physical health needs of migrant women, indigenous rights, and population control and family planning policies are tackled. Contributors include activists working on the ground as well as scholars and researchers.