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A review by amelia36
Full Surrogacy Now by Sophie Anne Lewis
this book wasn’t for me and that is ok! i like Sophie Lewis, I think she is a really engaging speaker and I appreciate her commitment to bringing back round discussion about The Family. I was looking for a nonfiction book about surrogacy that introduced the topic and laid out the critical arguments against and ‘in defence’ of the industry, something like Revolting Prostitutes by Juno Mac. I realised early on this is definitely not that book!
the book is made up of loosely tied together chapters— it kicks off looking at pregnancy and numerous risks to ‘birth givers’ due to gestating, giving birth and raising children eg risk of death, post partum depression and raising children with no support from the state. there’s a potted history of white feminists interactions with women in the global south. there’s a long analysis of the handmaids tale, both the book and HBO series. linked to this is criticism of liberal feminists utilisation of the handmaids tale in protesting against antiabortion legislation. it seems to take a while to get into the meat of the book — surrogacy — in terms of her position I think it’s summarised here:
“Unlike most legal scholars and activists in the Stop Surrogacy Now campaign, I am interested neither in defending against disruptions to the prevailing mode of reproduction per se, nor in applauding Surrogacy™ simply on the grounds that it is a disruption.”
“Full surrogacy now,” “another surrogacy is possible”: to the extent that these interchangeable sentiments imply a revolutionary program (as I’d like them to) I’d propose it be animated by the following invitations. Let’s bring about the conditions of possibility for open-source, fully collaborative gestation. Let’s prefigure a way of manufacturing one another noncompetitively. Let’s hold one another hospitably, explode notions of hereditary parentage, and multiply real, loving solidarities. Let us build a care commune based on comradeship, a world sustained by kith and kind more than by kin. Where pregnancy is concerned, let every pregnancy be for everyone. Let us overthrow, in short, the “family.”
I think it’s clear that Lewis envisions a future of surrogacy workers being considered workers in the same way those who sell sex are now understood as sex workers — (“Surrogacy bans uproot, isolate, and criminalize gestational workers, driving them underground and often into foreign lands, where they risk prosecution alongside their bosses and brokers, far away from their support networks”). Despite asserting at a couple of points that surrogacy workers want themselves to be considered as workers (and understandably want all the rights that come along with that) there is very little interaction with people doing surrogacy in this book or a proper exploration of their opinions which I found disappointing.
in terms of where I stood on this book and Lewis argument I still have a lot of questions and comments that i won’t really go into because 1. I cba typing it all out and 2. I struggled with this one a lot and there’s probably a high chance I’ve misinterpreted what Lewis has said.
in terms of prose this is an very dense text that only gets more dense and complex as you go on. my perception of Lewis is of a hyper-academic, very-divorced-from-reality (sorry!!) sort of utopian commentator and that makes me a little bit weary of the stuff she says. even if it’s reasonable and good, when you don’t communicate stuff in a normal, penetrable way then its easy to feel like this sort of ideas and arguments only belong to and can be discussed by certain types of people.
it’s a shame because I think this is an important topic. nonetheless I will have a go at the next book she is writing!
the book is made up of loosely tied together chapters— it kicks off looking at pregnancy and numerous risks to ‘birth givers’ due to gestating, giving birth and raising children eg risk of death, post partum depression and raising children with no support from the state. there’s a potted history of white feminists interactions with women in the global south. there’s a long analysis of the handmaids tale, both the book and HBO series. linked to this is criticism of liberal feminists utilisation of the handmaids tale in protesting against antiabortion legislation. it seems to take a while to get into the meat of the book — surrogacy — in terms of her position I think it’s summarised here:
“Unlike most legal scholars and activists in the Stop Surrogacy Now campaign, I am interested neither in defending against disruptions to the prevailing mode of reproduction per se, nor in applauding Surrogacy™ simply on the grounds that it is a disruption.”
“Full surrogacy now,” “another surrogacy is possible”: to the extent that these interchangeable sentiments imply a revolutionary program (as I’d like them to) I’d propose it be animated by the following invitations. Let’s bring about the conditions of possibility for open-source, fully collaborative gestation. Let’s prefigure a way of manufacturing one another noncompetitively. Let’s hold one another hospitably, explode notions of hereditary parentage, and multiply real, loving solidarities. Let us build a care commune based on comradeship, a world sustained by kith and kind more than by kin. Where pregnancy is concerned, let every pregnancy be for everyone. Let us overthrow, in short, the “family.”
I think it’s clear that Lewis envisions a future of surrogacy workers being considered workers in the same way those who sell sex are now understood as sex workers — (“Surrogacy bans uproot, isolate, and criminalize gestational workers, driving them underground and often into foreign lands, where they risk prosecution alongside their bosses and brokers, far away from their support networks”). Despite asserting at a couple of points that surrogacy workers want themselves to be considered as workers (and understandably want all the rights that come along with that) there is very little interaction with people doing surrogacy in this book or a proper exploration of their opinions which I found disappointing.
in terms of where I stood on this book and Lewis argument I still have a lot of questions and comments that i won’t really go into because 1. I cba typing it all out and 2. I struggled with this one a lot and there’s probably a high chance I’ve misinterpreted what Lewis has said.
in terms of prose this is an very dense text that only gets more dense and complex as you go on. my perception of Lewis is of a hyper-academic, very-divorced-from-reality (sorry!!) sort of utopian commentator and that makes me a little bit weary of the stuff she says. even if it’s reasonable and good, when you don’t communicate stuff in a normal, penetrable way then its easy to feel like this sort of ideas and arguments only belong to and can be discussed by certain types of people.
it’s a shame because I think this is an important topic. nonetheless I will have a go at the next book she is writing!