The Medicalization of "Nature" in the "Artificial Body": Surrogate Motherhood in Israel
Year: 2003
Type: article
Abstract: In this article, I draw on anthropological and feminist scholarship on the body and the nature/culture divide as a framework for understanding the place of surrogate mothers in a conceptual ideology that connects motherhood with nature. I explore links between the medicalization of childbirth in Israel and the personal agency of surrogate mothers as relayed through interviews. Taking the patriarchal context of the Israeli surrogacy law of 1996 into consideration, I underscore surrogates' imaginative use of medical metaphors as tools for the subversion of surrogacy's threatening social connotations. By redefining the surrogate body as "artificial" and locating "nature" in the commissioning mother's body, surrogates adopt medical rhetoric to transform surrogacy from a transgressive act into an alternative route toward achieving normative Israeli national reproductive goals.
Source: Medical Anthropology Quarterly
Author: Elly Teman
Institutions: Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Ruppin Academic Center
Language: English
Subfield: Reproductive Medicine
Field: Medicine
Domain: Health Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2091592273