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Abstract
In recent years, the emergence of transnational commercial surrogacy arrangements
has prompted consideration of how and whether it is possible to bridge claims for
reproductive rights from involuntarily childless couples and singles, many of whom
historically have been excluded from reproduction, with the rights and well-being
of the reproductive assisters. In this article, I suggest that a fruitful starting
point for a conversation on how to tackle such a challenge is to examine the way in
which surrogacy is conceptualized. Thus, I examine how scholars have queried surrogacy,
asking how different conceptualizations of who this reproductive phenomenon concerns
have led to the formulations of different types of ‘troubles’ of surrogacy. I delineate
three different conceptualizations of surrogacy. Firstly, how surrogacy as a way to
make parents has troubled scholars because of the conflation of reproduction with
consumption, thereby making reproduction a matter of financial resource. Secondly,
the trouble emerging when surrogacy is conceptualized as baby-making relates to how
surrogacy turns babies and bodies into commodities. Thirdly, surrogacy understood
as a phenomenon that concerns the women gestating and birthing the children has brought
attention to issues of exploitation. These different formulations of trouble point
towards tensions in the literature, while also offering reminders that surrogacy is
not one thing alone; a finding that provides an opening for new forms of reproductive
justice. This brings me to propose a rethinking of the notion of ‘reproductive assistance’,
arguing in favour of moving away from substitution and transaction towards a relational
being-together.