Surrogate Commerce versus Surrogate Medicine: Conceptions of Control in Gestational Surrogacy Markets in Ukraine and Kazakhstan

• In Event: 4341 - Markets and Morality

Abstract

Taking markets-as-fields perspective, I examine the central role that the fertility professionals in Ukraine and Kazakhstan played in establishing medical conceptions of control -- understandings of the fundamental guiding principles of exchange, and in stabilizing the fields in the morally fraught practice of reproductive surrogacy. In both countries surrogacy is defined as a last-resort medical treatment (medical help) to a small number of married couples based on medical need, rather than a repugnant commercial service, as surrogacy has been framed – and denounced – by anti-surrogacy scholars and activists.

In Kazakhstan, the field of assisted reproduction is much smaller, and until now it has been untapped by foreign capital or medical tourist demand. The medical profession also enjoys a close working relationship with the state. As a result, fertility doctors maintain tight and unchallenged professional grip over the surrogacy practice. In Ukraine, however, they struggle. The challenge is coming both from outside and within: an increased flow of intended parents to Ukraine after other countries closed surrogacy to non-natives; a seemingly uncontrolled proliferation of surrogacy agencies, that are neither licensed nor regulated; and the practices of some local clinics that directly contradict the medical conception of control mantra promoted by the professional association.

Author

• Alya Guseva, Boston University