8 Keeping it in the Family: Debating the Bio-Intimacy ... 205affectively motivated in terms of feminised affective labour. She per-
forms a recognisable form of motherhood, characterised by self-sacrifice,
humility, and devotion.
In both sets of debates, reproduction gets positioned as rightfully
belonging within the intended and/or extended family. In the case of
UTx, the first successful birth was the result of a 61-year-old family
friend, described by the recipient couple following their son’s first birth-
day as an ‘incredible’ person who made a contribution ‘without any
payments or anything: just good will’ (Orange and Macrae 2015 ). In
the article, the provider is depicted as seeing the baby as her seventh
miracle (following the birth of her own two sons and four grandchil-
dren), thus, taking up a legitimate and gendered position as maternal
protector and caregiver. She enters the bio-intimacy economy inter-
estingly as a known, yet still fairly invisible background figure, over-
shadowed in the text by the father’s naturalised quest to have his own
children (‘a former competitive golfer, who refused to accept he would
never have children’) and the mother’s desire for—and later fulfilment
of ‘own’ motherhood (‘I couldn’t wish for more’) (Orange and Macrae
2015 ). Meanwhile, in UT as well as in altruistic surrogacy cases, the
uterine provider becomes a natural gift-giver. She is repeatedly put in
close proximity to the intimate gendered positions of friend, mother,
godmother, and grandmother.
In these accounts, reproduction becomes re-positioned as a citizen-
ship project. Reproductive rights and choice can be positioned within
what Rose ( 2007 : 154) terms the regime of the self, referring to the enter-
prising individual who actively shapes his/her life course. In Western
late-capitalist societies, David Eng ( 2010 : 109) argues, having a child
serves as a guarantee for full and robust citizenship and for being rec-
ognised as a subject who has realised him- or herself economically,
politically, and socially, and as Halberstam ( 2005 : 5) notes, has entered
adulthood. Both surrogacy and UT enable this promise and possibility
of citizenship to infertile hetero- and homosexual couples and individ-
uals. In cases of surrogacy, Swedish national and local gay and lesbian
organisations have raised the question of legalisation of surrogacy to
be a question about gay rights, and especially a question about repro-
ductive citizenship to gay males. Meanwhile, Danish gay and lesbian