Precarious Pregnancies and Precious Products
Precarious Pregnancies and Precious Products
Transnational commercial surrogacy in Thailand
This chapter explores the intimate labour performed by surrogate mothers in the globalized fertility market. Using her body and providing her womb and uterus, blood and sweat, the surrogate mother engages in a highly embodied labour (Pande, 2014). At the same time, the non-genetic relation between the foetus and the surrogate is used by clients and clinics to reduce the woman to a ‘gestational carrier’ and a ‘mere vessel’ (Gupta, 2008; Pande, 2010). By drawing on interviews with Thai women enrolled in transnational commercial surrogacy, this chapter highlights the surrogate mothers’ precarious and vulnerable position in a process of cross-cultural biotechnological intervention with inherently differential power relations among the stakeholders.
Keywords: surrogacy, intimate labour, commercial surrogacy, transnational surrogacy, surrogate mother, Thai surrogates, fertility market
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