Labor of love : gestational surrogacy and the work of making babies /

Sociologist Jacobson (Univ. of Texas, Arlington) argues that Americans should be more accepting of gestational surrogacy and freely acknowledge its financial side. She skillfully outlines the many ways in which the members of the US surrogacy community she interviewed deliberately obscure the financial aspects of surrogacy arrangements. Reproductive endocrinologists, lawyers, surrogacy agency personnel, intended parents, and "surro-moms" and their families almost all push a narrative of altruism and the joys of pregnancy as the primary motivations of women who bear babies for genetically unrelated parents. In fact, Jacobson argues, surrogacy is made "culturally palatable" in the US precisely because of the unwritten "money rules" that require the use of intermediaries to create distance between surro-moms and the sordidly financial. She contrasts this with the situation in India, Israel, Thailand, and elsewhere, where, supposedly, the monetary aspects of surrogacy are not nearly as problematic as in the US. Jacobson's characterization of attitudes toward surrogacy in these countries is somewhat simplistic; for a more nuanced picture of gestational surrogacy in India, see Amrita Pande's Wombs in Labor (CH, Apr'15, 52-4505). Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above. --Ann Hibner Koblitz, Arizona State University