‘It is incumbent on each of us to feed the Other regardless of whether we

have given birth to her... Everyone must become “like a maternal body”

through recognizing responsibility to others.’ (Lee 2016 )

‘One night when we were downtown together with Tara, enjoying a street

festival, I wondered out loud if I’d be comfortable nursing Jacob there in

public. A true ally, she immediately offered to nurse him for me, saying

cheerily, ‘My boobs are your boobs!’. (MacDonald 2016 )

Introduction

In this chapter I take as my starting point the different ways peo-
ple informally share and sell human milk in contemporary Western
contexts, and the debate around the bioethical pitfalls and benefits of

12

Towards Social Maternity: Where’s the

Mother? Stories from a Transgender Dad

as a Case Study of Human Milk Sharing

Fiona Giles

© The Author(s) 2017
R.M. Shaw (ed.), Bioethics Beyond Altruism,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-55532-4_12

291

F. Giles (*)
University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia
e-mail: [email protected]