“I am the baby's real mother”: Reproductive tourism, race, and the transnational construction of kinship

Abstract

Synopsis This essay examines what I call “crossracial gestational surrogacy,” a practice in which prospective parents of one race contract with a woman of another race to carry their child. I situate surrogacy within transnational circuits of reproductive labor, particularly “reproductive tourism” from the United States to India. This essay examines how Western notions of race and genetic determinism are mapped uneasily onto surrogacy in India, including the ways in which Indian surrogates resist or complicate these discourses in creating their own narratives of surrogacy. The essay also interrogates the question of agency; while many critique reproductive tourism in India as yet another example of the wealthy elite exploiting the labor of poor women of color, or celebrate it as an empowering transnational example of women-helping-women, the reality is far more complicated. Moreover, intended parents benefit from the racial and economic “differences” between themselves and Indian surrogates.