No Surrogacy Abolitionist Movement would be complete without a fully stocked bookshelf of important books about surrogacy as well as a highly curated film library. And as the holidays are approaching, let us help you find the perfect gift for your feminist friends.

We hope you all are aware of Spinifex Press, an award-winning independent feminist press, publishing innovative and controversial feminists books with an optimistic edge.

Must Have Books

Brand new off the press is Towards the Abolition of Surrogate Motherhood.

This book is an “eloquent and blistering rejection of surrogacy,” from a wide range “of international activists and experts in the field,” where they “outline the fundamental human rights abuses that occur when surrogacy is legalised and reject neoliberal notions that the commodification of women’s bodies can ever be about the ‘choices’ women make.”

Surrogacy: A Human Rights Violation, by Spinifex’s own Renate Klein, is an important foundational book, making the case for why surrogacy must be viewed through the lens of human rights. 

Klein brings us to her conclusion, “that surrogacy, whether so-called altruistic or commercial, can never be ethical and outlines forms of resistance to Stop Surrogacy Now.”

Kajsa Ekis-Ekman’s Being and Being Bought: Prostitution, Surrogacy, and the Split Self makes its important contribution in drawing parallels between these two industries that are built literally on the bodies of women. Ekman also debunks the altruistic surrogacy model, and the “happy hooker” and “happy surrogate” myth.

If you want to hear directly from those most harmed by surrogacy, then you will want to read Broken Bonds: Surrogate Mothers Speak Out. This book is a collection of edited stories from voices all around the world. Broken Bonds presents “true stories of becoming ‘surrogate’ mothers out of kindness and compassion (or need for money), only to be deceived, neglected, abused, harassed, or abandoned by ‘baby buyers’, clinics, and lawyers. Their stories are tragic, shocking, and revelatory of a profit-driven industry that preys on desperation and women’s compassion.”

And your library would not be complete without Janice Raymond’s Women as Wombs: Reproductive Technologies and the Battle over Women’s Freedom. While Raymond’s book was released in 1995, it is still (sadly) important and relevant today.  “Raymond asserts that far from being liberatory issues of ‘choice’, these techniques – including in vitro fertilization, surrogacy, and sex selection – are a threat to women’s basic human rights.”

Must Watch Films

(free on YouTube and in many different languages)

  • Eggsploitation featuring U.S. women who made the tragic decision to sell their eggs, only to be harmed permanently
  • Maggie’s Story: one woman’s story of selling her eggs 10 times, now living with a stage IV breast cancer diagnosis.
  • #BigFertility features one gestational surrogate and her stories of exploitation and harm from three different surrogacy arrangements – all because she desperately needed the money.
  • Breeders: A Subclass of Women? features gestational surrogates, altruistic surrogates, “traditional” surrogates, all who were harmed, showing that no matter how surrogacy is structured, women will always be harmed and exploited.

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