Surrogacy: A Bio-economical Exploitation of Proletariats in Amulya Malladi’s A House for Happy Mothers

Abstract

Infertility remains a threat to global health issues thus the remedy is global with the medical advancements in technology that enable infertile couples to have babies through surrogacy. Surrogacy is a legal practice of hiring a woman’s womb for bearing a child to infertile parents where the intended parents claim full parental rights and the surrogate mothers get the monetary compensation in commercial gestational surrogacy. Surrogates are proletariats from third-world countries struggling to meet day-to-day ends, whilst intended parents are from first-world countries. The existence of poverty and poor economy avail abundant surrogates in third world countries like India attracts infertile couples to flock to these countries thus surrogacy clinics and agents practice exploitative surrogacy (baby) business. This article unveils the exploitation of poor surrogate women and their bodies, with reference to Amulya Malladi’s A House for Happy Mothers (2016). Further, this study attempts to evaluate surrogacy with the theoretical framework of Marxist Theory of Alienation or Estrangement which condemns the poor surrogates as reproductive machines (lobourers) and commercial surrogacy as commodification of wombs.