Translation of the 2017 article: Maternidad subrogada: vosotrasparís, nosotros decidimos. Patricia Merino author of Maternity, Equality and Fraternity In a TV program about surrogacy in Ukraine [1] , we watch the interview of a young Spanish couple who are to become parents thanks to an Ukrainian surrogate mother. The very competitive prices of surrogacy in this country have put this means of reproduction within the reach of the middle class (of the total 40-50,000 euros paid by intended parents, the program's researchers are unable to find out the exact amount the surrogate woman receives, but it is considerably less than the 8,000 euros per child advertised in the Ukrainian press as bait for women). The young 26-year-old Spanish intended mother who has a congenital condition that impedes her pregnancy, shows to the camera a tiny soccer team t shirt for the baby, and says, "when yo
Something Nasty is Brewing in The Hague (and in the EU) by Patricia Merino Murga Published in El Común 24/01/2024. https://elcomun.es/2024/01/25/algo-feo-se-esta-cocinando-en-la-haya-y-en-la-ue/ Surrogate motherhood is one of the most promising emerging global industries today. And so it is in the classic capitalist tradition: the outright exploitation of nature, huge profit margins and fantastic growth prospects (in 2022 the business was estimated to be worth 14 billion dollars, for 2032 the prospects are 129 billion [1] ). All this points to a situation where surrogacy will be the characteristic form of extractivism of the new transhumanist capitalism of the 21st century. The commodification of motherhood has been going on for four decades. Current legal and medical techniques make this new form of defining and socially legitimizing human reproduction possible. The key to it is the denial, derision, and trivialization of motherhood, despite the f