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From computer support and hotel reservations to laboratory results and radiographic interpretations, it seems everything can be 'outsourced' in our globalized world. One would not think so with parenthood, however, especially motherhood, as it is a fundamental activity humans have historically preserved as personal and private. In our modern age, however, the advent and accessibility of assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs) and the ease with which they have traversed global borders, has fundamentally altered the meaning of childbearing and parenting.
In the twenty-first century, parenthood is no longer achieved only through gestation, adoption, or traditional surrogacy, but also via assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs), where science and technology play lead roles. Furthermore, in a globalized world economy, where the movement and transfer of people and commodities are increasing to serve the interests of capitalism, gamete donation and surrogate birth can traverse innumerable geographic, socio-economic, racialized, and political borderlands. Thus, reproduction itself can be outsourced.
This edited volume explores one specific aspect of the new assisted reproductive technologies: gestational surrogacy and how its practice is changing the traditional concept of parenthood across the globe. The phenomenon of transnational surrogacy has given rise to a thriving international industry where money is being 'legally' exchanged for babies and 'reproductive labor' has taken on a lucrative commercial tone. Yet, law, research, and activism are barely aware of this experience and are still playing catch-up with rapidly changing on-the-ground realities. This interdisciplinary collection of essays assuages the dearth of knowledge and addresses significant issues in transnational commercial gestational surrogacy as it takes shape in a peculiar relation between the West (primarily the United States) and India.
List of contents
Chapter One: The Three 'M's of Commercial Surrogacy in India: Mother, Money, and Medical Market, Preeti Nayak
Chapter Two: Reconceiving Surrogacy: Toward a Reproductive Justice Account of Indian Surrogacy, Alison Bailey
Chapter Three: Gestational Surrogacy in India: The Problems of Technology and Poverty, Varada Madge
Chapter Four: Shifting Sands: Transnational Surrogacy, E-Motherhood, and Nation Building, Sayantani DasGupta and Shamita Das DasGupta
Chapter Five: The Power of Narratives: Negotiating Commercial Surrogacy in India, Amrita Pande
Chapter Six: The Rhetoric of the Womb: The Representation of Surrogacy in the Popular Mass Media in India, Anindita Majumdar
Chapter Seven: Mother India: Outsourcing Labor to Indian Surrogate Mothers, Sharmila Rudrappa
Chapter Eight: A Race to the Bottom? The Need for International Regulation of the Rapidly Growing Global Surrogacy Market, Seema Mohapatra
Chapter Nine: A Welfare Principle Applied to Children Born and Adopted in Surrogacy, Marsha J. Tyson Darling
Chapter Ten: Business As Usual? The Violence of Reproductive Trafficking, Sayantani DasGupta and Shamita Das DasGupta
Chapter Eleven: Transnational Surrogacy Takes Center Stage, Amy Feinberg and Jennifer Maisel
About the author
Edited by Sayantani DasGupta and Shamita Das Dasgupta - Contributions by Preeti Nayak; Alison Bailey; Varada Madge; Sayantani DasGupta; Shamita Das Dasgupta; Amrita Pande; Anindita Majumdar; Sharmila Rudrappa; Seema Mohapatra; Marsha J. Tyson Darling; Amy
