8 Keeping it in the Family: Debating the Bio-Intimacy ... 199one might swallow some minor camels’ (Junker 2013 ). When viewed
as an extension of infertile couples’ reproductive rights, altruistic sur-
rogacy, as evidenced in these bioethical and medical discourses, becomes
the best way to do surrogacy. A doctor and father through surrogacy
echoes this, when he asks, ‘Do you seriously think people would mort-
gage the house and home and travel halfway around the world, with all
the uncertainty that entails, if there was a possibility to become a parent
in a controlled manner here in Sweden?’ (Bengtsson 2013 ).
Within the discourses on altruism, a specific bio-intimate economy
takes form which models, we argue, hegemonic notions of mother-
hood. It is a premise in these discourses that while monetary exchange is
damaging for the child, surrogacy is not a form of labour. In fact, when
viewed as a type of (re)productive labour, surrogacy is seen to alienate
women from their own bodies, turning the reproductive body into frag-
mented, commoditised, and available parts (Gupta and Richters 2008 ).
Moreover, as noted by the former head of DER, Jacob Birkler, if a sur-
rogate is ‘only interested in the money’ this might make her distanced
to the child and thus, ‘damage the child, if she for example smokes or
drinks alcohol’ (Martensen 2016 ). In this bio-intimate economy, the
surrogate mother, who views her reproductive labour as a type of pro-
ductive labour, is made monstrous and selfish, reduced to a ‘container’
of sorts (e.g. Wiklund 2010 ; Fahlén and Åström 2013 ; Martensen
2016 ).
This metaphor is similar to that of ‘carrier’, commonly used in the
positions in favour of commercial surrogacy (Nebeling Petersen 2015 ).
Where the latter metaphor works to stress the view of surrogate moth-
ers as labourers (deriving from the verb to carry) and not akin (notice
how any kinship mark is linguistically removed, see also Nebeling
Petersen 2015 ); in the former metaphor the mediated production of a
(bodily) subjectivity of the surrogate mother is diminished to that of
non-animated thing. In this thingification of both the surrogate moth-
er’s uterus and her subjectivity (and one could add, discursive possibil-
ity for agency) are demolished. The uterus becomes, in this discourse,
an object, a thing, of which someone else is in control, mirroring the
rhetorical removal of her subjectivity and agency turning her choices,
bodily feelings, and identity work into an empty thing to be wrongfully