ABSTRACT
The speculative exploration of the relationship between the surrogate and the baby she cares for—if only briefly—recognizes touch as a primary nexus in the relationship between the body and technology. The author has shown that touch falls prey to the general disavowal of women's work—the feminized care labor that creates life, and keeps it safe and thriving. She has shown that technology, understood as an always-already intertwined relationship between object and practice, element and alloy, enables new forms of touch that present potential challenges to the hierarchy that relegates care labor and touch to mere animal striving. Gestational surrogacy is a useful case study because of the complex ways that technological practices, biological functions, and various sorts of caring labor come together to create a distributed network of love. It is important to recognize that what the surrogate is going through, as a pregnant person, is enormous. It is medically complex, emotionally and physically exhausting, and potentially very dangerous.
