Full Surrogacy Now: Feminism Against Family

Product Information

There is an extended discussion of the Akanksha Clinic in Anand, Gujarat, India, and its charismatic head doctor, Dr. Neither simply natural nor banally cultural, gestation appears as the unthought core of gender and sexual politics, and the key of a forthcoming womb revolution: trans-Marx meets mammal's politics! Gestational surrogacy makes it more difficult to name the “biological mother” with complete certainty, and this sort of murkiness strikes Lewis as the best possible world in which to raise children. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Condé Nast. And yet, notions of property are central to discussions of surrogacy under capitalism and within legal discussions.

One way to do this is by identifying all of us as “surrogates”: “Social reproduction theory becomes a matter populated by a whole raft of ‘surrogates’: provisioners, test subjects, helps and tech supports” (56). It drives otherwise prudent people to discard caution, whether by emigrating to another country or by bribing a child’s way into college. But this would be somewhat of a romanticization of families in the vision; a romanticization that Lewis, at the same time, wants to avoid about pregnancy or the family. For instance, Lewis sees surrogates as at the forefront of driving change, thereby emphasizing their agency and power. This book provides the longform discussion of these topics, thinking through very complex theoretical and political discussions.The surrogacy industry is worth an estimated 1 billion dollars a year, and many of its surrogates work in terrible conditions, while many gestate babies for no pay at all. The _ga cookie, installed by Google Analytics, calculates visitor, session and campaign data and also keeps track of site usage for the site's analytics report. Underpinning much of these discussions of gestational surrogacy is Lewis’s interrogation of the moralising discourse about whether surrogacy should be allowed and whether it is right, which mimic similar discussions around sex work. Should it be immediately (since the women need the work), in the near future (in amended form with some improvements), in the intermediate term (only when it is run as a collective but still within the broader context of capitalism), in the end state (only when everyone is doing surrogacy in the reproductive commune), or all of the above? Full of brilliant, generative, and also shamelessly biting critique of both bourgeois and communist tracts, feminist and otherwise, Lewis's voice is unique and bracing.

You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. Hotjar sets this cookie to know whether a user is included in the data sampling defined by the site's daily session limit. Importantly, however, Lewis does not want more surrogacy of the same kind that exists in today's neoliberal global marketplaces, the exemplar of which is Dr. Contrary to some of the negative reviews it has received, Full Surrogacy Now does not promote state-sponsored child rearing (or indeed state-sponsored anything).Nayana Patel, who runs the clinic, has argued that Akanksha pays surrogates more than they would make at other jobs. This would remove the need for surrogacy work in the first place and improve employment opportunities for workers, and both could be done without undermining the overall vision of abolishing the family.