A care ethical perspective on surrogacy - with Priya Sharma

What has been the impact of recent attempts to regulate surrogacy in India? How do surrogate mothers view their participation in the process? Can feminist care ethics, and specifically an understanding of care as labour, contribute to a better understanding of surrogacy? And what are the strengths and weaknesses of the radical feminist case against surrogacy?

These are some of the questions we explore in this episode with Priya Sharma. Priya recently took up a position as an Assistant Professor in the Humanities and Social Science at T A Pai Management Institute, on the Bengalaru Campus of Manipal Academy of Higher Education, in India. She has an academic background in anthropology, sociology and philosophy, and practical experience of working with a variety of social justice movements. Priya’s doctoral research at the Indian Institute of Technology in Mumbai, where she was until recently a postdoctoral fellow, developed a care ethical perspective on surrogacy regulation in India.

Building on her doctoral work, Priya has published an article, with her supervisor Amrita Banerjee, on ‘Animating the Affect–Care–Labor Link in the Wake of “The Surrogacy (Regulation) Bill”: Care Ethics and Policymaking on Indian Surrogacy’ in the journal Hypatia, and she has contributed a chapter entitled ‘Whose Ethos?: A Case of Indian Surrogacy law and its Moral Bedrock’ to the forthcoming Routledge Companion to Gender and Reproduction. Priya is also currently co-editing a volume on Technology, Mothering, and Care Ethics in the Peeters Ethics of Care series, and is a guest editor for a journal special issue on Critical Midwifery Studies.

Please note that the sound quality of this episode is less than ideal in places, due to a poor internet connection, so listeners may wish to refer to the transcript (link below) to aid understanding.

We discuss the following topics in this episode:

Priya's academic background and the origins of her interest in reproductive care (02:54)

Understanding surrogacy in the Indian context (09:50)

The regulation of surrogacy in India (17:16)

Priya's ethnographic research with surrogate women (22:32)

The influence of feminist care ethics on Priya's work on reproductive care (33:29)

The radical feminist critique of surrogacy and Priya's response (46:00)

Priya's work with Birth Futures and the Critical Midwifery Studies Collective (56:20)

Priya's plans for further research on surrogacy and reproductive care (01:05:09)

Some of the writers, researchers, professionals and activists mentioned in the episode:

Amrita Banerjee

Kushal Deb