The Decline in Intercountry Adoptions and New Practices of Global Surrogacy

Abstract

Intercountry adoption (ICA) has declined significantly since 2004. Now with fewer options for family building with a healthy child or infant via ICA, global surrogacy appears to be replacing the practice in some cases. This article presents a brief history of ICA and ethical dilemmas and human rights concerns and explores global surrogacy, starting with surrogacy practices in India. It then considers the new and emerging practice of surrogacy in Guatemala, with concerns about informed consent in the context of poverty and human rights abuses, including human trafficking and violence against women.

‘This neo-natal ménage à trois’: British media framing of transnational surrogacy

“…The data analysed from a representative sample of the British press illustrate a substantial interest in transnational commercial surrogacy. Messages were gain framed for commissioning couples and loss framed for surrogates and surrogate babies, much like research findings that have reported on vulnerabilities in outcomes and choice between privileged and disadvantaged counterparts in transnational commercial surrogacy (Palattiyil et al, 2010;Rotabi and Bromfield, 2012;Arvidsson et al, 2015) and highlighting the competing discourses of autonomy/opportunity/choice and inequality/exploitation evident in Markens' (2012) study of media framing and public discourses about transnational surrogacy in the United States.…”

The changing profile of surrogacy in the UK – Implications for national and international policy and practice

“…There is increasing evidence of considerable economic disparity between surrogates and commissioning couples in overseas arrangements and concerns for the surrogates and children involved (Pande 2009, Palattiyil et al 2010 as has previously been identified in the UK (van den Akker 2007). US social workers have warned that the decline in intercountry adoption may be leading to its replacement by global surrogacy as the preferred route for those wanting to build their family with a 'healthy' infant but with no less concerns among professionals as to associated ethical dilemmas and human rights concerns (Rotabi and Bromfield 2012).…”

Narratives of Choice amongst white Australians who undertake Surrogacy Arrangements in India

“…This construction of surrogacy as an individual choice (both in regards to intended parents and women who act as surrogates) obfuscates the fact that "new techniques of 'fertilisation' do not remedy fertility as such, but childlessness; they enable a potential parent to have access to the fertility of others" (Strathern 1992, 37). The rhetoric of individual choice, then, allows reproductive services such as those provided in the context of offshore surrogacy arrangements to be positioned on more morally-defensible grounds, thus avoiding the substantive concerns raised about the ethics of surrogacy, particularly those related to the power differentials between intended parents and women who act as surrogates (Damelio and Sorenson 2008;Palattiyil, Blyth, Sidhva and Balakrishnan 2010;Raymond 1994;Riggs and Due 2010;Rotabi and Bromfield 2012;Vora 2009). Strathern's (1992) early work on the topic of reproductive technologies provides an important background at to how the rhetoric of choice has become firmly embedded in discussions about surrogacy.…”