Paper short abstract:

Instead of seeing surrogacy as a separating process - which is dividing genetics, pregnancy, and motherhood - we would like to discuss the opportunity of considering surrogacy as a relational process - a « totus » as philosopher Vincent Descombes would say - in which childbirth have a crucial place.

Paper long abstract:

Although surrogacy has been forbidden in France since 1994, nowadays hundreds of French gay and heterosexual couples are turning to this technique abroad to build a family. Women who, because they've lost their uterus or don't have a functional one for whatever reason, are relying on a "cross-border surrogacy" arrangement to have a child.

Apart from the difficulties encountered (ethical questions, very high cost of this technique in the US and Canada, transcriptions into the French civil registry…), how is the "intended mother" recognized, by others and herself, as the mother of the child she didn't carry? How do the intended mother and the surrogate mother find their own places in this multiple-motherhood, when the link between delivery and filiation is so strongly naturalized and seems so obvious? What is at stake when a woman bears and gives birth to a child without recognizing herself as the mother?

Our work focuses on the relationship between "procreation" and "begetting": we suggest a new distinction by introducing "childbirth" as a crucial part of the process. We will describe the three types of surrogacy (with the egg of the intended mother, with an egg donor or with the surrogate's egg); it will help us to understand the different strategies of appropriation of a role or a status (mother/non-mother) for those involved in the surrogacy process, and will shed a new light on gender issues in the context of ART's with a third-party donor.