The Other Mothers: Surrogacy or the Making and Unmaking of Motherhood Through the French State’s Regulation of Surrogacy

With the far-reaching family reforms implemented with the introduction of same-sex marriage in France in 2013, the French state has become increasingly involved in regulating and reshaping family affairs. The National Advisory Ethics Council (in French “Comité Consultatif National d’Éthique”, CCNE), founded in 1983 and partly appointed by the state, is the institution in charge of publishing written opinions on ethical problems and social issues raised by developments in the fields of biology, medicine, and health. Examining the recommendations of this Council on surrogacy, this chapter analyzes how the discourse of this state institution otherizes two mothers. It reveals the epistemic injustices that characterize the making of what is qualified as “the Other mother” through unequal access to language. It shows that the persistent framing of gestational carriers as mothers (in the French terminology of “mères porteuses”) in policy texts suggests that such gestational carriers and intended mothers represent another and illegitimate figure of motherhood that threatens the morally desirable mother, thereby portraying surrogacy as a dangerous technology for the mother and even for society.