Merit and money: The situated ethics of transnational commercial surrogacy in Thailand

Abstract

Specific studies of the “situated ethics” of international surrogacy that address the structural conditions and local moral economies that sustain the trade are needed. In this essay, I describe the intimate industry of surrogacy in Thailand, exploring the local moral economy in which surrogacy is described as a form of Buddhist merit making and an opportunity to provide for one’s own children. This offers a further example of how other ethical values beyond the strictly economic are negotiated in commercial surrogacy relationships. Situated ethics allow us to locate and understand the tensions, competing logics, and contradictions within ethical practices.