Nurturing an Alien Pregnancy: Surrogate Mothers, Intended Parents and Disembodied Relationships

In India where a large number of Indian women, primarily from poor and disadvantaged economic sections, are willing to gestate a pregnancy for an infertile couple in exchange for compensation—the meaning of pregnancy is completely different. Navigating circumstances and relationships are not only strange for Indian surrogates but also for foreign as well as Indian couples who enter into the transnational commercial gestational surrogacy arrangement. Here the notion of risk is seen in the ‘disembodied relationships’ of couples and surrogates trying to nurture an alien pregnancy—alien for the surrogate due to her status as a non-claimant, and alien to the couple because it is housed in the body of another. Experiences culled from interviews with couples, surrogates and their relatives point towards how ‘risk’ is felt and played out in the care and nurturance of the pregnancy.