"Useful Bodies: Outsourcing Reproductive Technologies and Baby Making"

Ever since the Population Council used Asian Indian women’s bodies for hastily developed, risky, and often invasive contraceptive clinical trials in the second half of the 20^th century, poor Asian Indian women have been viewed and used as “useful bodies.” My paper will provide a brief overview of the factors that gave rise to the use of poor Asian Indian women’s bodies for contraceptive clinical trials in the 20^th century.  The paper’s main focus is on the social and economic forces that have shaped Indian women’s role as surrogates in genetics based Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ARTs) transnational gestational surrogacy arrangements. 

The commercial fertility industry is now a multi-billion dollar annual business that generates enormous profits for fertility specialists, fertility clinics, lawyers, and brokers, but the Indian women who provide “rental wombs” for the baby business receive very little compensation compared to those stakeholders who do not actually give birth to an infant. The basic premise of my paper will be that poor Asian Indian women have been identified by powerful economic, political and even ideological interests as “useful bodies” for both experimental contraceptive technologies in the 20^th century and more recently for their “usefulness” as a fertility “resource” in the emerging global outsourcing life industry; Indian women are now engaged in both productive and reproductive labor…work that uses both their hands and their wombs in an increasingly global marketplace. 

Sources: reports of the Population Council and the UN; scholarship on the fertility transnational surrogacy arrangements involving poor women in India.