Valuing Women’s Labour: Some Notes on the ‘Compensated’ Model of Surrogacy

Commercial surrogacy is India is currently practised amid an ambiguous, uncertain legal landscape. The article is set predominantly against the backdrop of surrogacy in India following the Surrogacy (Regulation) Bill of 2016, currently passed by the Lower House as the Surrogacy (Regulation) Bill of 2019, which calls for banning commercial surrogacy while only permitting altruistic surrogacy by a ‘close relative’. The state argues that commercial surrogacy must only be altruistic in nature, to protect women against trafficking or exploitation. The logic of altruism, or surrogacy without payment, is perceived as the solution to unchecked exploitation and to deter impoverished women from turning to commercial surrogacy as a means of livelihood. A 2016 Parliamentary Standing Committee (PSC) proposed a ‘compensated’ model of surrogacy where the surrogate mother’s medical expenses and loss of wages are covered. The article attempts to look critically at these framings of commercial, altruistic and compensated relations by analysing the connections between individual choice, the role of the family and the relationship between the private and the public. The article will draw from government reports published in the wake of the 2016 Surrogacy Bill, specifically the report passed by the PSC on Health and Family Welfare which submitted the 102nd report in August 2017, and the report submitted by the Select Committee of the Rajya Sabha (RSC) in 2019 to offer a critique of altruism and ‘compensation’ by looking at the ways in which the family, the market and the state interact. The article will also draw from ethnographic findings to look at the ways in which surrogate mothers position their own labour—at the intersections of familial and financial obligations—to articulate their roles within the processes of commercial surrogacy.