Outsourcing The Womb:U.S Media Framings And Public Discourses On Transnational Surrogacy

Due to various reasons,people have started stepping outside of their own national bounds in pursuit of assisted reproductive technology globally.The U.S and India are the two most popular destination for providing the surrogacy service.In this study the researcher analyzes how surrogacy practice in the U.S and India are framed on American news media respectively.The author applied purposive sampling to collect news pieces,which were retrieved from U.S Newsstream database.The time frame was set between 2006-2020,among the 663 pieces of articles that revolve around the research theme,47 articles were coded carefully as they were most relevant to the research being studied.The author has found that there are two opposing framings America media has constructed for surrogacy in India:exploitation and opportunities.Based upon the framing theory put forth by Erving Goffman,the author analyzed the construction of different framings and discourses in news reports related to surrogate mothers in the United States and India from three dimensions:selection criteria,causal interpretation as well as moral evaluation.The author further concluded that due to the American media’s different selection criteria for surrogate mothers,causal interpretation,and different presentations of moral evaluation,different framings and discourses are thus constructed.That is although family-building is a shared characteristic but its connotation differs when it comes to different national background.For American surrogates,the altruism frame was applied for they have helped infertile couple fulfill their parenthood dream.Yet it is only acceptable if they do it out of love and not for money.For India surrogates,the gendered empowerment framing was constructed for women in dire poverty to better the life of their own family through the means of surrogacy.The author then closely examines the different rules of decency and found that it is biased to some extent.For American surrogates,the motivation is not so purely altruistic;and for Indian surrogates,instead of gendered empowerment,working as surrogates actually brings about stigma and helps reinforcing the gender hierarchy and gender stereotyping.Such biased portrayal of surrogates located differently reveals the colonial lens American media has utilized in an attempt to perpetuate and preserve the existing social relations and power structures in the field of transnational reproduction.