ABSTRACT
Rene Lynn Almeling, a sociologist, conducted a rigorous study of the egg and sperm in commercial market. Almeling provides an analysis of the way that the sperm and egg market is organized to reinforce assumptions about gender roles and ideologies. Proponents of surrogacy employ the rhetoric of consumer rights and consumer choice while ignoring practices that could be characterized as economic coercion, racism, colorism, skin color hierarchies, and folk beliefs in White racial purity that structure some segments of the fertility industry. Some United States states and some Western European countries allow non-commercial surrogacy. Impoverished women from the new Europe states of the former Soviet Republic have become central to the global baby-making trade. Marcia Inhorn, an American anthropologist, who has conducted rigorous research on infertility in Egypt, found colorism and racism operating among Egyptian consumers of genetic material.
