Melinda Tankard Reist and Jennifer Lahl are Seeking Contributors for A New Book on Surrogacy

We are seeking contributions for a new global collection of first-person accounts by women who were surrogate mothers. The book will be edited by Melinda Tankard Reist (Australia) and Jennifer Lahl (US), and will be published by Spinifex Press for release in late 2017. We would be grateful if you could share this invitation through your networks.

Overview

The issue of surrogacy has received heightened interest in the media globally, following a number of high profile cases including ‘Baby Gammy,’ the baby boy with Down syndrome abandoned by his Australian commissioning parents who left him behind in Thailand, returning home with his healthy twin sister. In the face of an expanding reproductive marketplace, facilitating and driving reproductive tourism around the world, debate has fueled over commercialization and regulation of the baby-making industry, with vested interests, primarily commissioning couples and fertility businesses, capturing and dominating the discourse.

Surrogate mothers have been seen as providing a community service, delivering babies to desperate couples around the world. Reduced to ‘carriers,’ ‘ovens,’ and ‘suitcases,’ the surrogate mother has been treated as a means to an end. Surrogacy has even been promoted as a way for poor women to lift themselves and their families out of poverty. Time Magazine has labeled pregnancy as one of the ‘10 Best Chores to Outsource.’ Forbes Magazine said India’s baby factories were “a big win for everyone involved.” “You’d rent a nanny or a house painter. Why not rent a uterus?”

The physical and emotional costs of surrogacy, the exploitation of underprivileged women, the coercion, the physical, psychological and emotional harms of the procedures to women, the devastating consequences of severing the well-established and unique bond between mother and child, and the bioengineering of children who will never know their biological origins have been played down or dismissed by the global surrogacy industry.

Our new book seeks to change this narrative by bringing surrogate mothers’ stories out into the open, thus providing them with a platform to speak in their own voices. To be published by the award winning feminist publisher Spinifex Press, this collection will be co-edited by Australian feminist author, speaker, and activist Melinda Tankard Reist, and American founder and president of The Center for Bioethics and Culture Network, Jennifer Lahl, best known for her work and award winning documentary films to protect women and children wronged by the practices of third party reproduction.

This collection of 20 first-person accounts aims to work with social justice movements in Australia, the US, UK, across the European continent, Asia, and Africa so that this expanding industry can be stopped, and women and children are no longer exploited for commercial or personal gain.

Publication Details

  • Publisher: Spinifex Press
  • Publication Date: September 2017
  • Editors: Melinda Tankard Reist and Jennifer Lahl

Guidelines for Submissions

  • Length: 2,000-3,000 words. (Authors can use real names or use a pseudonym and change identifying details where necessary. If preferred, contributors can be interviewed or record their stories for transcription.)
  • Submission Deadline: January 15, 2017
  • Contact: Melinda Tankard Reist: melinda@tankardreist.com or Jennifer Lahl: jennifer.lahl@cbc-network.org