Paper short abstract:

The article looks at commercial gestational surrogacy through the prism of moral economy. Based on ethnography in Tbilisi, Georgia, the paper analyzes the complex entanglement of situated ethics, moral framing, and stigma.

Paper long abstract:

The article looks at commercial gestational surrogacy through the prism of moral economy. The moral economy views economic action as an affordance for socially acceptable and ethical behavior (Keane). The study is based on a two-year-long ethnography of commercial surrogacy in Tbilisi, Georgia. Georgia is one of the most popular destinations for commercial surrogacy.

The moral framing of surrogacy is often centered on the idea of ​​dual kindness: First, surrogacy is a virtue because it gives happiness to a childless couple. And second, surrogacy is a virtue for a surrogate who cannot support her children without this economic activity. In this discourse, two functions of a "good woman" are combined: giving care and giving birth.

Despite this framing, commercial surrogacy in Georgia remains a strong stigma. This stigma leads to risky behaviors that often upend the underlying ethics of moral framing. How come that despite moral framing, surrogacy remains so stigmatizing? The paper analyzes how the time of the pandemic with travel restrictions became an affordance for moral behavior revealing the complex entanglement of situated ethics (Ong).