Contribution short abstract:

Feminist campaigns against the exploitative practices of surrogacy employ popular literary figures as visual symbols of protest. This paper analyses how Atwood's iconic Handmaid becomes a symbol for reproductive justice and a common shared transnational resource to create public awareness.

Contribution long abstract:

Surrogacy remains one of the most controversial issues in feminist discourses on human biological reproduction. Since the advent of assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs) in the 1980s, feminist perspectives on surrogacy have been polarized, with some viewing it as a form of liberation and others as a practice rooted in exploitation. Drawing on my doctoral research on Kinderwunsch (the desire to have children of one’s own) in Germany, this paper analyses the activist visuals utilized by feminist groups in their opposition to surrogacy services promoted at Kinderwunsch exhibitions. I explore how these groups employ powerful symbolic imagery—such as the iconic figure of the Handmaid from Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale—to critique the commodification and exploitation of women’s bodies inherent in surrogacy practices. I argue that the creative use of such visualities in the context of human rights and reproductive justice are smart strategies to make these protests meaningful and relatable to a public that may not be as conversant with the practice of surrogacy. At the same time, they also make a statement of dissention against the biomedical and economic agencies that facilitate these arrangements of exploitation of women’s bodies while creating transnational solidarity with the women (mainly marginalized) whose bodies are exploited. These protests become generative in the sense of solidarity with exploited bodies of women against the extractive politics of surrogacy practices. The Handmaid’s figure thus becomes a common shared resource of understandable and shared meanings for reproductive justice campaigns.