Targeting surrogates’ motives as the defining elements of commercialism also displays insufficient regard to social and global justice: many women work as surrogates for various reasons, some because it is the best choice out of bad ones, but still, albeit controversially, offering many of them ways to improve their otherwise destitute lives. Conditioning surrogacy as motherhood and simultaneously linking unethical commercialism to the surrogate’s motives shows insufficient understanding of how motherhood is used to manipulate women in bioethical settings (it is used very similarly in both commercial and so-called altruistic surrogacy practices most grossly in the former, it used as a controlling discourse keeping surrogates at bay). Hence it is ethically dubious and moral hedging to not place the transnational healthcare companies in the hot seat when deciding on the morality of commercial surrogacy practices. Most definitely, the key commercial players in the current, global reproductive game are not the surrogates. Instead, one approach is to analyze surrogacy as work and discuss the just distribution of the profits gained from this reproductive work.

Especially surrogates in the Global South tend to get either demonized as purveyors of so-called commercial motherhood or patronized as mindless victims by white, middle-class academic feminism−. One way to tackle and theorize commercialism in surrogacy is not to focus on the commercialist motivation of the surrogate in deciding on ethicality of the practice. We are delighted to host cutting-edge research interrogating kinship, justice and equality, among other issues, with assisted reproduction services, a globally growing market.Ī key practice featuring several crucial research themes is surrogacy, an arrangement where a woman carries a baby that is not her genetic offspring for intended parents. Center for the Study of Bioethics Finland, Rainbow Families Finland and University of Turku Philosophy, supported by Turku University Foundation, organize a one day seminar on reproduction rights, ethics and politics.

Wombs in Labor by Amrita Pande