Full Surrogacy Now TR by Sophie Lewis

Product Details

• Publisher: Verso (2021-08-31)
• Language: English
• Paperback: 224 pages
• ISBN-13: 9781786637291
• Item Weight: 192.78 grams
• Dimensions: 19.86 x 12.85 x 1.45 cm

Where pregnancy is concerned, let every pregnancy be for everyone. Let us overthrow, in short, the “family”

The surrogacy industry is estimated to be worth over $1 billion a year, and many of its surrogates around the world work in terrible conditions—deception, wage-stealing and money skimming are rife; adequate medical care is horrifyingly absent; and informed consent is depressingly rare. In Full Surrogacy Now, Sophie Lewis brings a fresh and unique perspective to the topic. Often, we think of surrogacy as the problem, but, Full Surrogacy Now argues, we need more surrogacy, not less!

Rather than looking at surrogacy through a legal lens, Lewis argues that the needs and protection of surrogates should be put front and center. Their relationship to the babies they gestate must be rethought, as part of a move to recognize that reproduction is productive work. Only then can we begin to break down our assumptions that children “belong” to those whose genetics they share. Taking collective responsibility for children would radically transform our notions of kinship, helping us to see that it always takes a village to make a baby.

About the Author

Sophie Lewis is a theorist, critic and translator living in Philadelphia. She publishes her work—on topics ranging from dating to Donna Haraway—on both scholarly and non-academic platforms, including Boston Review, Viewpoint, Signs, Science as Culture, Jacobin, the New Inquiry, Mute, and Salvage Quarterly. Her translations include Communism for Kids by Bini Adamczak (with Jacob Blumenfeld), A Brief History of Feminism by Antje Schrupp, and Other and Rule by Sabine Hark and Paula Villa. A feminist committed to cyborg ecology and queer communism, she is a member of the Out of the Woods collective and an Editor at Blind Field: A Journal of Cultural Inquiry.