A new article published this month in Sexual and Reproductive Health Matters presents the results of a multinational ethnographic study to show how perceptions of ‘clinical labour’ such as surrogacy are shaped by local moral frameworks.
Marcin Smietana (ReproSoc, Cambridge University) and colleagues Sharmila Rudrappa (University of Texas at Austin) and Christina Weis (De Montfort University Leicester) compared the findings from their three ethnographies set in California (western US), Karnataka (south India) and St Petersburg (western Russia). Through interviews with surrogate mothers, intended parents, and surrogacy professionals, the three authors traced the meanings and ideologies through which they understood the clinical labour of surrogacy. They found three distinct ways of ethical reasoning about the clinical labour of surrogacy, including justifications of women’s incorporation into this labour, and concluded that they were situated in local moral frameworks. Inspired by earlier work on moral frameworks as well as on reproductive nationalisms and transnational reproduction, the researchers named these viewpoints 'repro-regional moral frameworks'. They also argue that any international or global regulation of surrogacy, or indeed any moral stance on it, needs to take these local differences into account.
Smietana, Marcin; Rudrappa, Sharmila; and Weis, Christina. 2021. "Moral frameworks of commercial surrogacy within the US, India and Russia." Sexual and Reproductive Health Matters, 29(1): 1-17; DOI: 10.1080/26410397.2021.1878674.
The image above is part of the cover image of the forthcoming book of one of the article's co-authors, Christina Weis: "Surrogacy in Russia. An ethnography of reproductive labour, stratification and migration" which will be published with Emerald Studies in Reproduction, Culture and Society in 2021.