Abstract Objective  Surrogacy is the process in which a woman carries and delivers a baby to other person or couple, known as intended parents. When carriers are paid for surrogacy, this is known as commercial surrogacy. The objective of the present work is to review the legal, ethical, social, and cultural aspects of commercial surrogacy, as well as the current panorama worldwide. Methods  This is a review of the literature published in the 21 st century on commercial surrogacy. Results  A total of 248 articles were included as the core of the present review. The demand for surrogate treatments by women without uterus or with important uterine disorders, single men and same-sex male couples is constantly increasing worldwide. This reproductive treatment has important ethical dilemmas. In addition, legislation defers widely worldwide and is in constant change. Therefore, patients look more and more for treatments abroad, which can lead to important legal problems between countries with different laws. Commercial surrogacy is practiced in several countries, in most of which there is no specific legislation. Some countries have taken restrictive measures against this technique because of reports of exploitation of carriers. Conclusion  Commercial surrogacy is a common practice, despite important ethical and legal dilemmas. As a consequence of diverse national legislations, patients frequently resort to international commercial surrogacy programs. As of today, there is no standard international legal context, and this practice remains largely unregulated.

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Commercial Surrogacy: An Overview

(1) Background: Gestational surrogacy is the most common type of surrogacy today. Although technologically well-developed and legal in many countries, it challenges and even contradicts the basic traditional concepts of family, motherhood, and gender roles. In the present study, we examined the types of stigma coping strategies surrogate mothers discussed in an online support group in post-Soviet Russia. (2) Method: We conducted a qualitative thematic analysis of 15,602 posts on a Russian-language online support group for surrogate mothers. (3) Findings: group members discussed four types of coping strategies: stigma internalization, stigma avoidance, group identification, and stigma challenging. Nevertheless, these strategies varied across the surrogate motherhood stages. Group members advised each other on specific strategies to use to cope with the state of discreditable (invisible) stigma (i.e., during the first few months of their pregnancies), with different strategies for when the pregnancies became visible and they risked becoming discredited people. Furthermore, group members disclosed that they used these strategies even when they returned to their previous family and work routines. Theoretically, our findings challenge Goffman’s classic theoretical dichotomy and coping research concerning discreditable (invisible) and discredited (visible) stigma. (4) Conclusion: Our findings indicate that surrogate mothers anticipate experiencing stigma and therefore plan for it by discussing potential coping strategies in the online group. Moreover, any intervention designed to cater to the needs of surrogate mothers must, therefore, take into consideration the social needs of their entire family.

"Only My Husband and My Doctor Know. And You, Girls": Online Discussions of Stigma Coping Strategies for Russian Surrogate Mothers.

In this article, we offer an analysis of the development of “repronubs”: less-known locations offering small-scale, niche cross-border gestational surrogacy or surrogacy services for a regional market. This analytical category of “repronubs” is useful to describe the formation of the industry from small local sites to those offering cross-border services. Based on our work in these locations, we compare the markets, regulatory contexts, and organization of the industry in Ghana, Kazakhstan, and Laos, focusing on the “repropreneurs” or surrogacy facilitation agents as pivotal in the emergence of these sites. These “repronubs” highlight the surrogacy trade between countries of the Global South and are established next to or instead of the more well-known North–South destinations. We document how surrogacy itself is increasingly stratified between higher cost and better-regulated environments such as in certain states of the United States or Canada and lower cost, less well regulated, and regionally focused environments in the settings we describe. These locations are characterized by poor or liberal regulations, the existence of local in vitro fertilization (IVF) expertise, and the emergence of local repropreneurs driving the trade using their social networks. The growth of demand from China and the growing affluent middle class in Africa is creating further markets for such regional “nubs.” Studying surrogacy in such locations is made difficult by the secrecy and confidentiality surrounding it.

Emerging “repronubs” and “repropreneurs”: Transnational surrogacy in Ghana, Kazakhstan, and Laos

Objective Surrogacy is the process in which a woman carries and delivers a baby to other person or couple, known as intended parents. When carriers are paid for surrogacy, this is known as commercial surrogacy. The objective of the present work is to review the legal, ethical, social, and cultural aspects of commercial surrogacy, as well as the current panorama worldwide. Methods This is a review of the literature published in the 21 st century on commercial surrogacy. Results A total of 248 articles were included as the core of the present review. The demand for surrogate treatments by women without uterus or with important uterine disorders, single men and same-sex male couples is constantly increasing worldwide. This reproductive treatment has important ethical dilemmas. In addition, legislation defers widely worldwide and is in constant change. Therefore, patients look more and more for treatments abroad, which can lead to important legal problems between countries with different laws. Commercial surrogacy is practiced in several countries, in most of which there is no speci ﬁ c legislation. Some countries have taken restrictive measures against this technique because of reports of exploitation of carriers. Conclusion Commercial surrogacy is a common practice, despite important ethical and legaldilemmas.Asaconsequenceofdiversenationallegislations,patientsfrequentlyresort to international commercial surrogacy programs. As of today, there is no standard international legal

Commercial Surrogacy: An Overview Gestação de substituição comercial: Uma visão global

Though commercial surrogates are paid for providing a service, there is systemic reluctance to characterize these arrangements as ‘work’. No jurisdiction in the world currently uses a labour law mo...

Surrogacy: time we recognized it as a job?

In this paper, we draw on three ethnographic studies of surrogacy we carried out separately in different contexts: the western US state of California, the south Indian state of Karnataka, and the western Russian metropolis of St Petersburg. In our interviews with surrogate mothers, intended parents, and surrogacy professionals, we traced the meanings and ideologies through which they understood the clinical labour of surrogacy. We found that in the US, interviewed surrogates, intended parents and professionals understood surrogacy as an exchange of both gifts and commodities, where gift-giving, reciprocity, and relatedness between surrogates and intended parents were the major tropes. In India, differing narratives of surrogacy were offered by its different parties: whilst professionals and intended parents framed it as a win-win exchange with an emphasis on the economic side, the interviewed surrogate mothers talked about surrogacy as creative labour of giving life. In Russia, approaches to surrogacy among the interviewed surrogate mothers, professionals and intended parents overlapped in framing it as work and a businesslike commodity exchange. We suggest these three different ways of ethical reasoning about the clinical labour of surrogacy, including justifications of women's incorporation into this labour, were situated in local moral frameworks. We name them "repro-regional moral frameworks", inspired by earlier work on moral frameworks as well as on reproductive nationalisms and transnational reproduction. Building on these findings, we argue that any international or global regulation of surrogacy, or indeed any moral stance on it, needs to take these local differences into account.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/26410397.2021.1878674

Sharmila Rudrappa

Papers

Moral frameworks of commercial surrogacy within the US, India and Russia.