The Legitimation of Commercial Surrogacy in Russia

Abstract

Commodification is becoming an increasingly common phenomenon in the modern world. A vivid example of the commodification of unique objects is commercial surrogacy services, which transform the status of motherhood from being a “woman’s social vocation” into a service whose end product is a human life that is valued in monetary terms. According to Igor Kopytoff, blurring the boundary between goods and unique objects can undermine the social order (Kopytoff 2006). However, gainful surrogacy has not in fact undermined the social order, which raises the question of how the functioning and legitimate existence of such a service can be assured in society. The authors of the present article have analyzed 14 interviews with employees at Moscow reproductive clinics and agencies that provide legal support services for surrogate mothers.¹ We demonstrate on the basis of this analysis that the way in which the child’s status is determined and the potential parents and surrogate mothers are selected as well as how the relations between the genetic parents and the surrogate mother are regulated confirm the notion of kinship that was pioneered in the Euro-American theory of David Schneider. This concept is based on the idea that kinship relations are determined primarily by the presence of a common genetic substance and only secondly by social relations that are based on specific patterns of behavior in the family (Schneider 1980). This implies that genetic kinship is of primary importance to how ideas about kinship relationships are developed, while at the same time it implies that ideas about gestational kinship are not believed to be as important. Thus, the belief of employees at clinics and agencies that the genetic link between parents and children predominates over the gestational relationship makes it possible to legitimize the practice of gainful surrogacy in general and certain aspects of the procedure by which the service is provided in particular by decommodifying the child so that he or she is no longer the object of a commercial transaction.

Acknowledgments

The authors of the article are grateful to their academic advisor, G.B. Yudin, for his valuable comments and feedback that he contributed during the preparation of this article. The authors are also grateful for the assistance provided by staff members at various Moscow medical clinics (including Altra-Vita and Karmenta) as well as legal agencies involved in providing support for commercial surrogacy services. Without their contributions, the study would not have been possible.

Notes

¹. The study provided the basis for a presentation that was made at the seminar “Sociology of Markets” [Sotsiologiia rynkov], which was held at the Laboratory for Studies in Economic Sociology (LESI) of the Higher School of Economics on December 2, 2015. The authors also presented their research findings at the Tenth Kovalev Readings All-Russian Research and Practice Conference, which were devoted to the topic of “Russia in the Modern World: the View of the Sociologist.” The event took place between November 13 and 15, 2015, in St. Petersburg. See Yu.D. Kersha et al., “Meditsinskaya pomoshch’ ili prodazha detey? Protsess legitimatsii praktiki surrogatnogo materinstva,” in Yu.V. Asochakov, ed., Desyatye Kovalevskiye chteniya. Materialy nauchnoprakticheskoy konferentsii, November 13–15, 2015, St. Petersburg: Skifiya-print, pp. 2048–2050, URL: http://publications.hse.ru/ru/chapters/167076118

². When we use the phrase “genetic parents” in this article, we mean the multitude of people who seek out the services of medical clinic and legal support organizations that provide commercial surrogacy services and who are seeking to become the parents of a child. It is understood that in cases where donor genetic material is used, the other component (whether egg or sperm) comes from one of the potential parent patients, thus maintaining a genetic link between at least one of the parent patients and the future child.

³. The interviewees were guaranteed complete anonymity when providing information. Therefore, neither the names of the employees nor the names of the organizations where they work will be disclosed or used in the article.

⁴. For more information about the problem of the commodification of vitally important goods and ways to solve it, see Berdysheva 2012.

⁵. Some clinics as well as law firms provide surrogacy services to single men, citing the fact that the law governing the use and provision of surrogacy services does not restrict the provision of this service to single men (Federal Law 2011).

⁶. Specialists admit the possibility that of the single women and men who apply for surrogacy services, there may be patients with an unconventional sexual orientation who prefer to hide such information about themselves.