Transnational commercial surrogacy in India: gifts for global sisters?

Abstract

In this ethnography of transnational commercial surrogacy in a small clinic in India, the narratives of two sets of women involved in this new form of reproductive travel – the transnational clients and the surrogates themselves – are evaluated. How do these women negotiate the culturally anomalous nature of transnational surrogacy within the unusual setting of India? It is demonstrated that while both sets of women downplay the economic aspect of surrogacy by drawing on predictable cultural tools like 'gift', 'sisterhood' and 'mission', they use these tools in completely unexpected ways. Previous ethnographies of surrogacy in other parts of the world have revealed that women involved in surrogacy use these narratives to downplay the contractual nature of their relationship with each other. Ironically, when used in the context of transnational surrogacy in India, these narratives further highlight and often reify the inequalities based on class, race and nationality between the clients and suppliers of reproductive tourism in India.

Assisted Reproductive Technologies and Fertility “Tourism”: Examples from Global Dubai and the Ivy League

“…Such ''law evasion'' (Storrow 2010(Storrow , 2011 is particularly true of middle-aged career couples who have delayed childbearing but are unable to access donor oocytes and surrogates in their home countries. The United States is viewed as one of the few ''trustworthy'' sites for accessing donor technologies and surrogacy, particularly compared to Spain or India, two of the major global hubs for these practices, respectively (Bergmann 2010(Bergmann , 2011Pande 2011).…”

“…Their global scope is impressive. For example, a special issue of Reproductive BioMedicine Online on Cross-Border Reproductive Care (November 2011) highlights medical anthropological work on reproductive travel from Turkey to Cyprus (Gurtin-Broadbent 2011); Australia to Thailand (Whittaker 2011); Germany to Spain and the Czech Republic (Bergmann 2011); the United States to the Czech Republic (Speier 2011); the United Kingdom to Spain (Hudson and Culley 2011); Italy to various European Union countries (Zanini 2011); Israel to Romania (Nahman 2011); and the United States and Europe to India for gestational surrogacy (Pande 2011). Similarly, a forthcoming volume on Islam and Assisted Reproductive Technologies: Sunni and Shia Perspectives (Inhorn and Tremayne 2012) includes studies of fertility tourism to and within the Muslim Middle East.…”

Surrogacy tourism: the ethical and legal challenges

“…There is therefore a marked economic inequality between the two parties (Pande, 2011). Further, there is a gulf between the surrogate mothers and the local doctors treating them in terms of class, level of education and social power (Deonandan, Green & van Beinum, 2012).…”

Märkte der guten Hoffnung

“…"Wer zahlt, bestimmt die Musik", sagt sie an einer Stelle, während sie wenig später betont: "In einem Wort: Leihmutterschaft ist ein gegenseitiger Gewinn!" Insofern gilt es, dieses "polymorphe" Bild nachzuzeichnen und anzuerkennen, das die ungleiche Verteilung von Handlungsmacht, aber auch die Komplexität von Machtbeziehungen thematisiert (Weitzer 2009), wie sie ebenfalls von Daisy Deomampo (2013) und Amrita Pande (2009Pande ( , 2010aPande ( , 2010bPande ( , 2011 in ihren differenzierten Ethnographien über Leihmutterschaft in Indien gezeigt wurde . Beim Versuch, der "marginalisierten" Position in einem Arbeitsverhältnis Handlungsmacht zuzusprechen, begeben sie sich nicht auf eine "intellektuelle Osterei-Suche" (Frank 2006: 283) (Floyd 2014), sondern kann diese bereichern, weil sie die Lebensrealitäten von Menschen miteinbezieht .…”