New Thinking on Commercial Surrogacy

Abstract

Pamela Laufer-Ukeles’s Mothering for Money: Regulating Commercial Intimacy imagines that a less polarized vision of commercial surrogacy can emerge by examining commercial surrogacy arrangements through lenses of relational autonomy and mixed commodification. This commentary finds much to appreciate in Laufer-Ukeles’s contribution and urges a more expansive examination of surrogacy that would address the ban on commercial surrogacy that exists in many countries around the world.

Keywords: surrogacy, commercial surrogacy, international surrogacy, autonomy, commodification, exploitation, intimacy