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Pande, Amrita. Wombs in Labor: Transnational Commercial Surrogacy in India. New York: Columbia University Press, 2014. xi + 252 pages. Paperback, $28.00.
Wombs in Labor , written by sociologist Amrita Pande, is a comprehensive discourse of commercial surrogacy in India, its impact on bioethics and human rights, and the degree to which this commodification of women's bodies empowers and/or exploits women.
Commercial surrogacy is morally and ethically ambiguous, with both the capacity for oppression as well as the opportunity for economic and psychological empowerment. India's Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) Regulatory Bill seeks to legislate the unprecedented "biomedicalization of the birth process" (p. 119) at both the micro and macro levels by promoting, among other concepts, medical and financial transparency. Regrettably, the rights of the surrogate are secondary to the larger economic framework. The requirements for a surrogate are a healthy womb and a virtuous ("inert and submissive") disposition (p. 75). Intended parents have invasive rights to the body of the surrogate, and the ART Bill, which keeps the negotiating power of the surrogates in check, may become more strictly enforced to minimize legal complications. In...