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Between Strangers: Surrogate Mothers, Expectant Fathers, and Brave New Babies by Lori Andrews
4/5. An overview of surrogacy as it stood in 1989, written by a lawyer and reproductive justice advocate. You'd think a thirty-year-old book would not have much bearing on the world as it is now, considering the multiple revolutions in fertility technology since, but you'd be wrong. This book is mostly about women entering into contracts to be inseminated with a man's sperm, to birth his child, and to surrender that child to him and his wife. These days, generally a woman contracts to have her menstrual cycle suppressed then restarted, and to have an embryo inserted into her uterus, to carry the child, and more often than not the child is legally that of the intended parents upon birth. Yet the debates described in this book between feminists, between lawmakers, are exactly those you hear now. Which is pretty sad, from my perspective.
Anyway, what will stick with me from this book is the story of one surrogate who carried her own child, then three for infertile couples, then suffered a stillbirth of her own child, all while waging a war for women's reproductive freedom against state lawmakers who didn't believe that midwife care should be permissible. This book tells many other stories – one famous one of a surrogate who was unfit to be one and who tried to keep the baby after, and one of a surrogate who was taken hideous advantage of by the intended parents. There's a lot of power exchange in these relationships, and it can go wrong. And it's women's bodies on the line, even more than it is the completion of families suffering infertility. This book really gets at that, and the fiercely feminist reasons for thinking hard about that and regulating sensibly and carefully, without ever telling women that they aren't allowed to do this extraordinary thing.
4/5. An overview of surrogacy as it stood in 1989, written by a lawyer and reproductive justice advocate. You'd think a thirty-year-old book would not have much bearing on the world as it is now, considering the multiple revolutions in fertility technology since, but you'd be wrong. This book is mostly about women entering into contracts to be inseminated with a man's sperm, to birth his child, and to surrender that child to him and his wife. These days, generally a woman contracts to have her menstrual cycle suppressed then restarted, and to have an embryo inserted into her uterus, to carry the child, and more often than not the child is legally that of the intended parents upon birth. Yet the debates described in this book between feminists, between lawmakers, are exactly those you hear now. Which is pretty sad, from my perspective.
Anyway, what will stick with me from this book is the story of one surrogate who carried her own child, then three for infertile couples, then suffered a stillbirth of her own child, all while waging a war for women's reproductive freedom against state lawmakers who didn't believe that midwife care should be permissible. This book tells many other stories – one famous one of a surrogate who was unfit to be one and who tried to keep the baby after, and one of a surrogate who was taken hideous advantage of by the intended parents. There's a lot of power exchange in these relationships, and it can go wrong. And it's women's bodies on the line, even more than it is the completion of families suffering infertility. This book really gets at that, and the fiercely feminist reasons for thinking hard about that and regulating sensibly and carefully, without ever telling women that they aren't allowed to do this extraordinary thing.
