Bilatzailea
The right to be a mother. Who pays?
In recent years, the conversations that are heard in the classrooms about motherhood have changed considerably. Two decades ago, motherhood appeared in the speeches of young girls as an almost “natural” phase of the future, while today it is a journey full of doubts, calculations and conditions. Students talk about egg freezing, the possibility of being a single mother, job and life stability. Some say they want to be mothers, but not now; others don’t know if they will ever be; and there are also those who place motherhood outside their life project. Motherhood is no longer the only inevitable goal, but it is no longer a completely liberated choice: it is increasingly seen as an option that depends on planning, strategy and technology.
In this context, as the age of motherhood is delayed, it is increasingly common for reproductive processes to be complemented by external resources: using the eggs of other women, resorting to in vitro fertilization or traveling abroad in search of a surrogate mother. These possibilities, which are theoretically mentioned in the classrooms, are becoming, in practice, an increasingly common reality.
But these options are not made in a vacuum. While we claim the right to motherhood in rich countries, the consequences that make this desire possible accumulate in other territories. The latest report published by La Marea (https://www.lamarea.com/especial-gestacion-subrogada/) highlights the unequal and violent structure behind the international reproductive industry, often the precarious bodies of women in the global South and subsistence contracts under the guise of approval. In Colombia, Ukraine or Georgia, many women turn their bodies into resources, in unequal conditions and almost always driven by poverty.
Motherhood is presented as a personal and autonomous choice, as if it were a free decision that is integrated into one’s own biographical project. In the dominant discourse, freedom and right are the key. But the globalized reproductive industry turns this desire into raw material, and the conditions of this freedom are not evenly distributed. For some, motherhood is a technologically assisted option, while for others, the body itself is the resource that is put on the market. These two realities are created in close connection with each other; the possibilities that unfold on one side require “accessible bodies” on the other. Although prices vary depending on the country, the logic is always the same: making economic and geopolitical differences profitable. Reproduction, childbirth and care become contractually regulated services, integrating women’s bodies into a global market. This has turned motherhood into an international business and intimate desire into a lever of economic performance.
On the other hand, although reproductive technologies open up new opportunities for motherhood, these opportunities do not always coincide with greater freedom. When motherhood is incorporated into the logic of consumption, the opposite often happens: the pressure on one’s own body increases and anxiety is normalized, extending the logic of performance to the most intimate processes. Motherhood becomes a project that must be managed, a goal that is measured in the parameters of success and failure, and not a process that is lived as an autonomous and free experience.
Therefore, motherhood cannot be understood only as a right or a personal project. It has become an area traversed by power relations, class differences and market logic. As more opportunities open up on one side in the globalized reproductive market, exposure, risk and dependence on the other side increase.
In short, motherhood is transforming, yes, but these transformations are neither unidirectional nor neutral. These changes leave their mark on the bodies of women around the world, distributed in very different ways.
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