196 C. Kroløkke and M.N. Petersen
Debating Surrogacy: Monetary Frameworks
and the Intimate Promise of Altruism
In the Swedish and Danish debates on surrogacy, three positions are
prominent: one in favour of commercial surrogacy, one in favour of
altruistic surrogacy but against commercial surrogacy, and lastly one
against all forms of surrogacy. In the Danish public debates, the position
in favour of commercial surrogacy is in minority, though more present
than in Sweden, where the debates seem to be polarised between those in
favour of solely altruistic surrogacy and those opposing all forms of sur-
rogacy (Munter 2014 ; Nordgren 2014 ). In both countries the state ethi-
cal councils, the Swedish The State’s Medical-Ethical council (SMER) and
the Danish Ethical Council (DER), have published reports on the topic
of surrogacy. Both reports have the majority recommendation to keep
commercial surrogacy illegal but to legalise altruistic surrogacy. In what
follows, we analyse the Swedish and Danish debates about surrogacy
looking for similarities and common structures. As both ethical councils
recommend altruistic surrogacy, we end with this position in the debates,
but firstly turn to the position in favour of commercial surrogacy and
then revert to the one against all forms of surrogacy.
The position in favour of commercial surrogacy consists of two major
discourses. One neoliberal discourse argues that the surrogate should be
free to choose for her own body (e.g. Juliussen 2015 ), and one discourse
of gay emancipation positions commercial surrogacy as a means to gay
male reproductive citizenship (e.g. Vestlund 2013 ; Westergaard 2015 ).
Two members of the liberal-conservative political party Moderaterne
echo this latter position, when they write: ‘...gay men are expected to
take their societal responsibility by paying taxes to the implemented fam-
ily politics without they themselves are given any possibilities for repro-
duction’ (Johansson and Holmström 2010 ).^5 In this position in favour
of commercial surrogacy, monetary exchange functions as a security of
the surrogate mother’s economic rights and positions her as a worker.
Surrogacy becomes a liberal job, no different than being employed in
a supermarket. As philosopher Dan Munter ( 2014 ) argues: ‘Women
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