Sociological Debates on Gestational Surrogacy

Sociological Debates on Gestational Surrogacy PDF

Author: Daniela Bandelli

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2021-10-31

Total Pages: 168

ISBN-13: 3030803023

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

This open access book discusses and analyses competing views and social implications of gestational surrogacy, which is making inroads as an option for parenthood as well as a work opportunity for women. It provides a rich account of transnational mobilizations for the abolition and regulation of surrogacy, with focus on United States, Italy and Mexico. The author critically assesses the core narratives of supporters and opponents of surrogacy, in order to understand this reproductive practice in light of some of the essential elements of contemporary societies, such as the “child at any cost” culture, individualism, technology and female emancipation. This book appeals to scholars, policy makers and all those who want to understand the controversial debate on this unprecedented method of family formation and life production.

Outsourcing the Womb

Outsourcing the Womb PDF

Author: France Winddance Twine

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2012-08-06

Total Pages: 80

ISBN-13: 113616460X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

A quiet revolution has been taking place during the past three decades. The way that children enter families has changed radically among upper middle class families. In the 1980s infertility increasing became defined as a medical problem that could be solved with assisted reproductive technologies (ART) rather than through adoption. Asexual or ‘assisted conception’ involving medical technologies such as in vitro fertilization and embryo transfers began to replace sexual reproduction for infertile couples. Third parties, referred to as surrogates are hired to assist individuals and/or couples who wish to conceive and child with whom they share a genetic tie. This has resulted in a ‘surrogate baby boom.’ Outsourcing the Womb provides a critical introduction to the global surrogacy market. A comparative analysis of the assisted reproductive technology and surrogacy industry in Egypt, Israel, India and the United States disentangles the intersecting roles of race, religion, class inequality, religious law, and global capitalism. Gestational surrogacy challenges the idea of ‘natural’ reproduction and of the meaning of parenthood. What role should the state play in providing individuals and families with access to reproductive technologies? This book concludes with a discussion of ‘reproductive justice’. The goal of this new, unique series is to offer readable, teachable "thinking frames" on today’s social problems and social issues by leading scholars, all in short 60 page or shorter formats, and available for view on http://routledge.customgateway.com/routledge-social-issues.html For instructors teaching a wide range of courses in the social sciences, the Routledge Social Issues Collection now offers the best of both worlds: originally written short texts that provide "overviews" to important social issues as well as teachable excerpts from larger works previously published by Routledge and other presses.

The Online World of Surrogacy

The Online World of Surrogacy PDF

Author: Zsuzsa Berend

Publisher: Berghahn Books

Published: 2016-09-01

Total Pages: 270

ISBN-13: 1785332759

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Zsuzsa Berend presents a methodologically innovative ethnography of SurroMomsOnline.com, the largest surrogacy support website in the United States. Surrogates’ views emerge from the stories, debates, and discussions that unfold online. The Online World of Surrogacy documents these collective meaning-making practices and explores their practical, emotional, and moral implications. In doing so, the book works through themes of interest across the social sciences, including definitions of parenthood, the symbolic role of money, reproductive loss, altruism, and the moral valuation of relationships.

Gestational Surrogacy

Gestational Surrogacy PDF

Author: Consuelo Corradi

Publisher:

Published: 2019

Total Pages:

ISBN-13:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

In the last decade, surrogacy has developed as a fast-growing, transnational practice of medically assisted reproduction. Globalization and as trans-national accessibility of medical services, facilitated the spread of surrogacy across country boundaries. Feminists have mobilized against surrogacy, claiming that this reproductive technology is the ultimate form of women commodification and slavery (Klein 2017). Other feminist groups adopt a liberal approach or demand better regulations to protect of all the subjects involved. This special issue looks at this reproductive technology from the vantage point of different sociological fields: medical sociology, sociological theory, sociology of the body and the family. Articles investigate the dominant arguments adopted to support or ban surrogacy, established practices of medical control, competing definitions available in international legal frameworks, connections between surrogacy and the dismissal of the body in post-humanism, and the changing social imaginary around the new family structures. Within a vibrant international scholarship predominantly focused on parents' and surrogates' narratives, there is need for reflections on the social implications of surrogacy on the future generation.

Contract Children

Contract Children PDF

Author: Daniela Danna

Publisher: ibidem-Verlag / ibidem Press

Published: 2015-07-01

Total Pages: 201

ISBN-13: 383826780X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Surrogate motherhood is expanding all over the world. Debates rage over how public policy should consider the signing away of the parental rights of birth mothers in favor of a 'commissioning' couple or an individual. In this book, Daniela Danna describes the situation in English-speaking countries and worldwide, from California to Greece, presenting the legal alternatives regulating (or not) these peculiar exchanges. Should surrogacy remain a private agreement? Should it be treated as an enforceable contract? Are surrogate mothers workers? What happens inside the countries that have chosen different ways of handling this new and controversial matter? And, the most important question of all: How can we live in this era of new techno-medical possibilities and try to stay human? Can we resist commodification in the field of human relations concerning procreation? Contract Children discusses the different ways available to obtain a child through surrogate motherhood. It is fundamental reading for anyone wanting to be involved in the surrogacy process. It gives prospective surrogate mothers and infertile couples the background information necessary for their own informed decision. It is also an essential instrument for policy makers and activists in the field of women's rights, social justice, and children's rights. The question of how to publicly deal with surrogate motherhood touches upon our social vision of motherhood, ultimately marking the position of women in contemporary society.

Surrogate Motherhood

Surrogate Motherhood PDF

Author: Rachel Cook

Publisher: Hart Publishing

Published: 2003-06-30

Total Pages: 325

ISBN-13: 1841132551

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

This multi-disciplinary book explores legal, ethical, social, psychological and practical aspects of surrogate motherhood in Britain and abroad.

Labor of Love

Labor of Love PDF

Author: Heather Jacobson

Publisher: Rutgers University Press

Published: 2016-03-15

Total Pages: 321

ISBN-13: 0813584388

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

While the practice of surrogacy has existed for millennia, new fertility technologies have allowed women to act as gestational surrogates, carrying children that are not genetically their own. While some women volunteer to act as gestational surrogates for friends or family members, others get paid for performing this service. The first ethnographic study of gestational surrogacy in the United States, Labor of Love examines the conflicted attitudes that emerge when the ostensibly priceless act of bringing a child into the world becomes a paid occupation. Heather Jacobson interviews not only surrogate mothers, but also their family members, the intended parents who employ surrogates, and the various professionals who work to facilitate the process. Seeking to understand how gestational surrogates perceive their vocation, she discovers that many regard surrogacy as a calling, but are reluctant to describe it as a job. In the process, Jacobson dissects the complex set of social attitudes underlying this resistance toward conceiving of pregnancy as a form of employment. Through her extensive field research, Jacobson gives readers a firsthand look at the many challenges faced by gestational surrogates, who deal with complicated medical procedures, delicate work-family balances, and tricky social dynamics. Yet Labor of Love also demonstrates the extent to which advances in reproductive technology are affecting all Americans, changing how we think about maternity, family, and the labor involved in giving birth. For more, visit http://www.heatherjacobsononline.com/

Birthing a Mother

Birthing a Mother PDF

Author: Elly Teman

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2010-03-04

Total Pages: 382

ISBN-13: 0520945859

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Birthing a Mother is the first ethnography to probe the intimate experience of gestational surrogate motherhood. In this beautifully written and insightful book, Elly Teman shows how surrogates and intended mothers carefully negotiate their cooperative endeavor. Drawing on anthropological fieldwork among Jewish Israeli women, interspersed with cross-cultural perspectives of surrogacy in the global context, Teman traces the processes by which surrogates relinquish any maternal claim to the baby even as intended mothers accomplish a complicated transition to motherhood. Teman’s groundbreaking analysis reveals that as surrogates psychologically and emotionally disengage from the fetus they carry, they develop a profound and lasting bond with the intended mother.

Surrogate Motherhood and the Politics of Reproduction

Surrogate Motherhood and the Politics of Reproduction PDF

Author: Susan Markens

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 292

ISBN-13: 9780520252035

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

In an analysis of legislative responses to surrogacy in New York and California, the author explores how discourses about gender, family, race, genetics, rights, and choice have shaped policies aimed at this issue. She examines the views of legislators, women's organizations, religious groups, the media, and others.

Debating Surrogacy

Debating Surrogacy PDF

Author: Anca Gheaus

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2024

Total Pages: 249

ISBN-13: 0190072172

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Offering a for-and-against look at surrogacy, this book focuses on questions which bear on its justifiability: Is providing gestational services a permissible way of employing a woman's body? Indeed, is it a legitimate form of work? Are the children born out of surrogacy in any way wronged by surrogacy agreements?