Birthing a mother: the surrogate body and the pregnant self - By Elly Teman

Abstract

BOOK Review - Elly Teman begins Birthing a mother with a prologue about a woman, Yael, whom she met in Haifa, Israel. Yael had been married for fifteen years and was ‘completely focused on having her own genetic child, created from an egg harvested from her ovaries and gestated in another woman's womb’ (p. xvii). Yael's story about the emotional highs and lows that she faced in the process provides a powerful opening to this highly accessible yet intellectually rigorous ethnography of gestational surrogates and intended parents in Israel.