Transnationalising Reproduction: Third Party Conception in a Globalised World

Third party conception is a growing phenomenon and provokes a burgeoning range of ethical, legal and social questions. What are the rights of donors, recipients and donor conceived children? How are these reproductive technologies regulated? How is kinship understood within these new family forms?

Written by specialists from three different continents, Transnationalising Reproduction examines a broad range of issues concerning kinship and identity, citizenship and regulation, and global markets of reproductive labour; including gamete donation and gestational surrogacy. Indeed, this book seeks to highlight how reproductive technologies not only makes possible new forms of kinship and family formations, but also how these give rise to new, ethical, political and legal dilemmas about parenthood as well as new modes of discrimination and a re-distribution of medical risks. It also thoroughly investigates the ways in which a commodification of reproductive tissue and labour affects the practices, representations and gendered self-understandings of gamete donors, fertility patients and intended parents in different parts of the world.

With a broad geographical scope, Transnationalising Reproduction offers new empirical and theoretical perspectives on third-party conception and demonstrates the need for more transnational approaches to third-party reproduction. This volume will appeal to postgraduate students and postdoctoral researchers interested in fields such as Gender Studies, Health Care Sciences, Reproductive Technology and Medical Sociology.

Jenny Gunnarsson Payne is Associate Professor of Ethnology at Södertörn University in Stockholm, Sweden

Róisín Ryan-Flood is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Essex, UK