Wombs in Labor: Transnational Commercial Surrogacy in India

Contemporary South Asia [Routledge], 2016

Work, Employment and Society

This article investigates reproductive work in the Global South which thrives on the commodification of women’s reproductive bodies under local-global reproductive hierarchies, appropriating the process of reproduction for production. Through a qualitative study of commercial surrogacy in north India, it examines the lived experiences of surrogates within the capitalist social relations they are embedded in. Conceptualising surrogacy as reproductive labour which contributes to value generation, the article assesses labour relations at the workplace, for example hostels where surrogates ‘live and work’, and the mechanisms of recruitment, contracting and control which function through dense networks of social and material relations between various stakeholders. The weak bargaining power of surrogates and the immense power of fertility clinics and agents are compounded by the lack of effective regulation and the state’s prohibitionist policy. The article argues for protecting the right...

2021

With the advent of assisted reproductive technologies and in-vitro fertilization, a multibillion-dollar industry driven by demand was created where female bodies were used as factories to deliver quick products, in form of babies, unrelated to the humanness of it all. In third-world countries like India, the phenomenon was considered to be more exploitative due to the prevalence of surrogacy brokers who lured marginalized women with false promises of jobs and easy money and where lack of informed consent, poverty, and ignorance, worked as catalysts. Since 2002 when India legalized commercial surrogacy, it made way for a new form of economic well-being for many who preferred to become surrogates to tide over their economic conditions; yet, dark stories of human abuse contributing to near-death situations of surrogate mothers, neonatal and prenatal mortalities, and other human rights violations were revealed. In the absence of regulatory provisions, exploitations in the garb of surrogacy practices came to the fore. Multiple cases were reported where poor women were trafficked, traded, enslaved, raped, and forcefully made to conceive babies. The introduction of the ART Bill, 2014 and Surrogacy (Regulation) Bill of 2019 sought to ban the practice of commercial surrogacy. The article highlights the ethical and legal controversies that surround commercial gestational surrogacy and situates the discussion within the milieu of labor exploitation, trafficking, and other human rights abuses. Alongside, it talks about India's efforts to combat the menace based on international developments. The authors have undertaken a qualitative analytical approach to critically evaluate the issues concerning commercial surrogacy and its legal position. In conclusion, the authors indicate that though the Indian legislative attempts to curb the exploitative aspects of commercial surrogacy are well intended, it remains largely ineffective, especially in the context of human rights priorities of women and children.

Subjectivity, 2009

Assisted reproductive technologies allow women to sell the service of gestating a fetus, but maintain little or no claim to the product of that labor: the child itself. In the context of transnational Indian surrogacy, this situation is exacerbated by the physical and cultural distance between intended parents and surrogates. The productive nature of the care and nurturing provided through the work of mothering becomes more visible when viewed though the commodification of commercial surrogacy. Once commodified, this work of care also becomes subject to the alienation of capitalist relations, which invites us to investigate the social and economic implications of the work of mothering in surrogacy. I argue that care and nurture in transnational Indian surrogacy invest human vital energy as a form of value directly into other human beings, through the biological and affective labor involved in surrogate work, thereby supporting the lives of those individuals, families and societies that consume this energy.

This book takes a reproductive justice approach to argue that surrogacy as practised in the contemporary neoliberal biomarkets crosses the humanitarian thresholds of feminism. Drawing on her ethnographic work with surrogate mothers, intended parents and medical practitioners in India, the author shows the dark connections between poverty, gender, human rights violations and indignity in the surrogacy market. In a developing country like India, bio-technologies therefore create reproductive objects of certain female bodies while promoting an image of reproductive liberation for others. India is a classic example for how far these biomarkets can exploit vulnerabilities for individual requirements in the garb of reproductive liberty. This critical book refers to a range of liberal, radical and postcolonial feminist frameworks on surrogacy, and questions the individual reproductive rights perspective as an approach to examine global surrogacy. It introduces ‘humanitarian feminism’ as an alternative concept to bridge feminist factions divided on contextual and ideological grounds. It hopes to build a global feminist solidarity drawing on a ‘reproductive justice’ approach by recognizing the histories of race, class, gender, sexuality, ability, age and immigration oppression in all communities. This work is of interest to researchers and students of medical sociology and anthropology, gender studies, bioethics, and development studies.

Critical Sociology, 2017

In the decade following legalization of commercial surrogacy in 2002, India became the largest provider of surrogacy services. Then, in December 2015 commercial surrogacy was banned. In this article I show that commercial surrogacy was no panacea for working-class women, but the ban can potentially be far worse because the Indian state now allows only altruistic surrogacy between citizen couples and their women kinfolk who will provide gestation services for no monetary compensation. By positing altruistic surrogacy as a superior alternative, the Indian state has effectively deregulated surrogacy, potentially allowing deeper exploitation of women. I conclude that if the state wants to halt exploitation of working-class women, which is the expressed reason for banning commercial surrogacy, then policies need to be directed at strengthening labor laws to protect women as productive individuals, rather than wives or mothers.

This article outlines the complexities of agency in the lives of women who become surrogates in India. I contrast the stories of women whose personal narratives buttress the point that the global surrogacy industry reinforces a broader stratification of reproduction. Concurrently, I show how women resist dominant constructions of surrogates as powerless victims, and I argue that in expressing forms of resistance and agency, women find ways to challenge everyday gender norms and create new opportunities for themselves, albeit within larger structures of power. I also critically examine the roles of women who act as intermediary agents, showing how the creation of intermediary positions misrecognizes mobility in the surrogacy industry as a form of empowerment. Rather, I argue that such positions reinforce the increasingly refined hierarchies inherent in transnational surrogacy. By revealing the many ways that women enact agency, however limited, I highlight the subtleties of intra-class social divisions transnational surrogacy engenders, and illustrate how women both exert power and are subject to it.