Storks and Jars: Within the World of Surrogacy Narratives

By analyzing public accounts of the experiences of surrogates and intended parents, this article aims at identifying popular American discourses on surrogacy, which remains a contested assisted reproduction technology. Focusing on first-person narratives, I look at the strategies of rationalization employed by people entering commercial surrogacy contracts, particularly in relation to the monetary exchange. I argue that even though the ethics of financial compensation is not questioned in most narratives by surrogates and intended mothers, the normalizing discourse on American surrogacy requires the issue of money to be downplayed – instead surrogacy is presented as an altruistic “gift of life.”