Surrogacy and Medicalization: Navigating Power, Control, and Autonomy in Embodied Labor

Abstract

ABSTRACT Gestational surrogacy exposes a group of reproductively healthy women to highly medicalized assisted reproductive interventions. This paper conducts a close examination of the medicalization of the surrogate body to better understand how women who act as surrogates navigate issues of power, autonomy, and control. Drawing on thirty-three in-depth interviews with women who were surrogates in the United States, I find women construct a highly scientific and embodied expertise of knowledge to prepare for, and execute, their responsibilities as a surrogate. I demonstrate that surrogates have a unique relationship to the issues of power and control that arise in the medicalization process. This distinctive orientation to medicalization does not render the issues of power and control obsolete, rather it contextualizes how women navigate these issues within their gendered and embodied labor.