Dirty Wombs and Cheap Whiteness: Labors and Erasures of the Global Fertility Industry

Abstract The hegemony of Western liberal feminism is best captured by the emphasis on individual self-determination and questions of autonomy and choice in any discussions around reproduction. This primacy given to choice and individual rights is fundamentally based on liberal conceptions of politics. In the past decade, feminists have cautioned against an excessive reliance on the rhetoric of choice because, first, it romanticizes people's ability to make their own decisions and conceals the structures of power that shape these decisions, and second, it minimizes the responsibilities of being the bearer of such choices. This essay focuses on the fertility industry (especially third-party reproduction, including egg provision and surrogacy), to argue that the emphasis on reproductive rights and choice is not just analytically insufficient but inadequate to address issues of justice embedded in this rapidly booming industry. The essay draws on Black feminist thought on reproductive justice and Dalit feminism on motherhood and sexual labor to argue that, for any discussion about justice to hold sway, there is an urgent need to go beyond the bioethical critique of commodification of life and instead conduct an analysis that reveals the multiple complexities of a fundamentally stratified and highly racialized labor market.