The Romance of Surrogacy1

This article seeks to demonstrate and analyze the cultural and emotional work surrogate mothers collectively engage in on the largest surrogacy support website, http://www.surromomsonline.com . Surrogate mothers’ online stories and discussions frame contract surrogacy as a “labor of love.” Women often describe their surrogacy as a “journey” of shared love; they hope for a lasting relationship with the couple they carry for. This article explores how the language of love, learned and internalized through online communication with other surrogates, creates both a cultural conceptualization of surrogacy and a ground for action. Love and altruistic giving are consistent with close interpersonal rather than market relationships; surrogates hope for a long‐term friendship with their couple. Surrogacy journeys, however, not infrequently end in disappointment; surrogates feel betrayed when couples cut ties. As a result of collective learning, surrogates’ discussions increasingly articulate the position that love, even when unreciprocated, can lead to repeated giving; love is noble and ennobling. Surrogates find appreciation and support in their online surrogacy community where they agree that giving life is a moral good. This stance has contributed to a renewed enthusiasm to bear children for others.     

Multiple mobilities in Mexico’s fertility industry

ABSTRACT

How can we conceptualize travel in search of fertility treatment? While current research on transnational reproduction mostly conceptualizes mobility as horizontal movement from A to B, this article shows how horizontal mobilities converge, contradict, and are interdependent with other forms of mobility; namely vertical mobilities in terms of social upward and downward mobility, representational mobilities in form of imaginative geographies, and the actual embodied experiences of mobility. Based on ethnographic research on the reproductive tourism industry in Mexico, the article explores the multiplicity of mobilities that constitute transnational reproduction. The article evaluates how the concept of multiple mobilities contributes to the study of medical tourism from a critical mobilities’ perspective.     

代孕行为引起的法律问题探究

代孕技术作为一项人工生殖辅助技术,是在20世纪90年代才产生的。它的产生给人类没有生育能力的夫妇带来了福音,然而由该技术引起的代孕行为会涉及很多伦理及法律上的相关问题。各国对其态度不一,我国已于2001年立法禁止。探讨代孕行为可能产生的法律问题和伦理问题,以及如何客观地看待这一行为。     

论对失独者＂代孕＂行为的法律保护

在风险社会和计划生育的背景下，失独者“代孕”有其必要性和紧迫性。从法理和权利角度看，失独者在生育权、生存照顾权和继承权等方面的特殊法律地位使其有权进行“代孕”。在当前我国对“代孕”争议较多的背景下，应尽快并优先赋予失独者“代孕”权，建立“法律一行政法规和部门规章一地方规范性文件”三级规范体系，同时在司法实践中重新界定代孕合同的法律性质，从而将失独者的“代孕”行为纳入法治轨道，并维护其基本人权。     

Surrogacy: The experience of Greek commissioning women

BackgroundAvailable studies on surrogacy are extremely limited. Findings suggest that surrogacy is experienced as problem free, with a significant number of commissioning mothers maintaining contact with the surrogates over time.AimTo explore the experiences of Greek commissioning women regarding the surrogacy arrangement and birth of a child through surrogacy.MethodsThe data of this study were collected from 7 intended mothers who had either a long history of infertility or serious health problems. Interviews were tape-recorded, transcribed and analysed employing content analysis.FindingsThe analysis of the women's accounts revealed three themes: (a) a shared journey, (b) the birth of a long-awaited child, and (c) the surrogacy disclosure. The surrogacy process became the women's affairs, with their partners offering backstage support. A very close bond was developed with the surrogates, characterised by daily contacts and care-giving behaviours. While this bond was abruptly discontinued after the child's birth, it was interiorised with all participants being grateful to their surrogate. The timing and content of the surrogacy disclosure to family and child(ren) were carefully chosen by participants, who avoided providing information when egg donation was involved.ConclusionFindings are reassuring for women who want to parent a child through a surrogate arrangement, and suggest that the availability of counselling services may help intended mothers to cope with disclosure issues.     

Potential surrogate endpoints in cancer research – some considerations and examples

We present an introductory survey of the use of surrogates in cancer research, in particular in clinical trials. The concept of a surrogate endpoint is introduced and contrasted with that of a biomarker. It is emphasized that a surrogate endpoint is not universal for an indication but will depend on the mechanism of treatment. We discuss the measures of validity of a surrogate and give examples of both cancer surrogates and biomarkers on the path to surrogacy. Circumstances in which a surrogate endpoint may actually be preferred to the clinical endpoint are described. We provide pointers to the recent substantive literature on surrogates. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Between the Social and the Personal: Israeli Male Gay Parents,Surrogacy and Socio-Political Concepts of Parenthood and Gender

This work focuses on the effects of dominant concepts of parenthood and gender on gay men who became parents through surrogacy. Based on the analysis of 39 in-depth, semistructured interviews with gay fathers, we show that gay fathers' parenting experiences are shaped by the heteronormative discourse on parenthood, yet they resist its gendered attributes. Gay parenthood is revealed as confronting the social concepts on parenthood, in particular on motherhood, and their socio-political meanings. The tension between the social concepts and the participants' perceptionsy leads them to confront their social environment and to construct alternative discourse to the social discourse of parenthood and gender, suggesting that gay parenthood subverts under existing concepts of parenthood, gender and their meanings within the state.     

“Infertile Motherhood”

This study explores the socio-cultural arena following legalization of surrogate motherhood in Israel by analyzing Israel's most popular television series: A Touch of Happiness. The qualitative analysis presented here reveals a constant tension between women's reproductive and sexual bodies. This analysis demonstrates how social institutions of marriage, divorce, and motherhood are serving as instruments that reward fertile and punish infertile women. Advances in medical technology and modern surrogacy enable the infertile female to achieve motherhood even though her body remains infertile. Thus, paradoxically, if a woman selects to avail herself of these medical advances, she becomes an “infertile mother.” Viewed more broadly, the implications of such hybrid conceptions pose a threat to the patriarchal order, and therefore it was negated in this television series by a rich array of narrative and rhetorical devices. Derived by deeply rooted cultural–religious beliefs, the ideological stance applied in the series de-legitimizes female infertility and non-biological motherhood achieved through surrogacy. In doing so, it perpetuates notions of the inferiority of both types of women in the social order and cultivates the perception of biological determinism as a primary measure in determining all women's destinies, solely by the state of their wombs.     

“The Mommy Deployment”: Military Spouses and Surrogacy in the United States

This article examines narratives of women who are surrogates and are married to members of the military in the United States. I show how this group of women invoke and transpose their structured military experiences and institutional understandings of sacrifice, duty, and responsibility when constructing their surrogate experience. Using semistructured interviews with 33 military spouses who have been surrogates,? I trace the parallels they narrate between their role as military spouse and their role as surrogate—with metaphors of deployment, relocation, and the “hurry up and wait” game, in addition to strict daily regimentation. Through this work, I highlight the often‐surprising transposition between militarized and surrogacy narratives invoked by surrogates and show how the practice of surrogacy allows them to tap into the narratives they have crafted through their experiences as a spouse to make a difference in the lives of others, contribute financially to their own families, and to gain a sense of importance outside of their everyday roles. The narratives provide for a better understanding of the commercially arranged surrogate experience in the United States and the state‐structured military spouse experience by exposing the skills, language, and habits utilized by this group of women.     

North American surrogate reproductive mobilities incited by cross-border reproductive care

ABSTRACT

The transnational mobility of intended parents traveling abroad for reproductive technologies has been heavily accounted for and theorized. On the other hand, scholars have emphasized the immobility of surrogates in places like India, Nepal and Cambodia. In order to extend an examination of how reproductive travel informs mobility, this paper will turn a critical eye toward North American surrogates’ reproductive mobilities that are incited by their participation in cross-border reproductive care. Surrogates in the United States are strikingly different from the images presented of surrogates in India. In fact, when the North American surrogates cycle for international intended parents, in some aspects they become less and more mobile. This paper will focus on multiple types of reproductive mobilities that are involved in the global fertility industry when international intended parents travel to North America for assisted reproduction.