ABSTRACT

Surrogates talk of pregnancy loss as a painful and traumatic experience even though they emphatically disclaim any attachment to the foetus they carry. There are no available statistics of surrogate miscarriages and stillbirths, or on the effects of the extensive medication many surrogates take, on reproductive outcomes or long-term health of surrogates. This chapter explores cyber-ethnography as a research method because the Internet is central to the recent flourishing of American surrogacy. The medicalisation of pregnancy and advances in reproductive technologies, together with a range of sociopolitical developments, has led to a new public elaboration of the personhood of the wished-for child. Emotional loss is sometimes aggravated by lack of financial compensation. In the case of reproductive loss, the loss of attention is accompanied by additional complex feelings. The relationship between couple, surrogate, and foetus magnifies loss; failure to conceive or carry a pregnancy to term means failure to deliver the promised gift.