Globalization and transnational surrogacy in India : outsourcing life / edited by Sayantani DasGupta and Shamita Das Dasgupta.

"From computer support and hotel reservations to laboratory results and radiographic interpretations, it seem everything can be 'outsourced' in our globalized world. In our modern age, however, the advent and accessibility of assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs), and the ease with which they have traversed global borders, have fundamentally altered the meaning of even childbearing and parenting. In the twenty-first century, parenthood is no longer achieved only through gestation, adoption, or traditional surrogacy, but also via ARTs. In a globalized world economy, where the movement and transfer of people and commodities are increasing to serve the interests of capitalism, gamete donation and surrogate birth can traverse innumerable geographic, socioeconomic, racialized, and political borderlands. Reproduction itself can be outsourced. The chapters in Globalization and Transnational Surrogacy in India: Outsourcing Life explore transnational commercial gestational surrogacy and how its practice is changing concepts of parenthood across the globe. The phenomenon of transnational surrogacy has given rise to a thriving international industry in which money is being 'legally' exchanged for babies and 'reproductive labor' has taken on a lucrative commercial tone. Yet law, research, and activism are barely aware of this experience and are still playing catch-up with rapidly changing on-the-ground realities. This interdisciplinary collection assuages the dearth of knowledge and addresses significant issues in transnational commercial gestational surrogacy as it takes shape in a peculiar relations between the West and India"--Unedited summary from book cover.