Cross-Racial Surrogacy and Reproductive Exploitation

     Monday's reading, "Brown Bodies, White Eggs:  The Politics of Cross-Racial Gestational Surrogacy" by Laura Harrison, a doctoral candidate in gender studies at Indiana University, elaborated upon the racial implications of surrogacy.  Now, because gestational surrogacy uses sperm and egg that do not belong to the woman bearing the child, women of color can give birth to 'white' babies.  Harrison argues that despite the increasing potential and popularity of gestational surrogacy, the public discussion of the trend has not adequately handled the racial implications of such technology.

     In her analysis, Harrison reveals the racialized discourse and implications of such reproductive developments through a critical historical, legal, and anti-racist feminist lens.  Women of color, especially African American women in the US, have historically been exploited for their reproductive capacities by wealthy whites - for production of slave labor, nursing white infants, raising white children, and, now, birthing white babies.  Because gestational surrogacy involves a monetary exchange, Harrison categorizes cross-racial surrogacy as an alternate manifestation of the same reproductive exploitation.

     Evidencing the lack of conversation about these issues, I only found one example of racial theorizing about gestational surrogacy in my outside research - a blog post on the Feminist Law Professors website which read:

"One could envision a dystopian future in which financially-needy Black women, who disproportionately comprise the ranks of this country’s poor, are hired to give birth to the babies of rich White couples...It would reiterate the Black woman’s body as a laboring one (on multiple levels) while doing nothing to eradicate discourses in which the poor Black woman figures as an incompetent mother. That is, the Black woman would be empowered to produce children, yet remain disempowered to raise them."

     Although both Harrison and the post quoted above agree about the nature of this dystopic exploitation of women of color, Harrison posits it as a present reality.  She identifies a pattern of cross-racial gestational surrogacy and its problematic consequences, and she labels it the "outsourcing of gestation."  This outsourcing can be international, but is also symbolic - brown bodies carry babies for white folk once again.