Search

Canada has recently emerged as a hotspot in a burgeoning global surrogacy bio‐economy. On the grounds that any commercial trade in reproductive capabilities would result in the exploitation of marginalised women willing to sell their eggs and wombs, Canada's Assisted Human Reproduction Act (AHRA) bans commercial surrogacy, allowing only for altruistic arrangements. Drawing together analysis of the AHRA and related legal, regulatory, and policy documents, feminist political economic theory, and a growing body of critical social scientific scholarship on surrogacy, this paper troubles altruism as a means of insulating surrogacy from market‐based exploitation. It contributes to the extant literature an explicit focus on the law as a key site in the reproduction of the gendered division of labour. Acknowledging the serious concerns that dog commercial markets in reproductive biology, it argues that the legal constitution of gestational work as altruistic is part of a broader juridico‐economic apparatus that has systematically devalued reproductive labour under capitalism. Efforts to insulate surrogacy from the market by legally designating it as a gift freely given facilitate the ongoing appropriation of reproductive labour, which is assigned, once again, to the realm of non‐value. A feminist political‐economic critique of altruism, this paper does not forward an argument in favour of commercialisation. Rather, its aim is to upend the commercial/altruistic binary that has circumscribed so much of the thinking and legislating around surrogacy. This paper explores the role of the law in devaluing reproductive labour under capitalism. It does so via an examination of Canada's burgeoning surrogacy bio‐economy and the legislation – the Assisted Human Reproduction Act – designed to regulate it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]