Keeping it in the family: Debating the bio-intimacy of uterine transplants and commercial surrogacy

In Danish and Swedish ethical and media debates, uterine transplants, in sharp contrast to commercial surrogacy, get positioned as a maternal gift-giving act. We argue that uterine transplants become (unlike commercial surrogacy arrangements) positioned in the private , intimate sphere of an individual known living donor (frequently the woman’s mother, a sibling, mother-in-law, or a friend) donating her viable but no longer individually needed uterus to help a known recipient (daughter, sister, daughter-in-law, or friend) experience pregnancy and birth. We propose the concept of bio-intimacy to help make sense of the ways that the uterus, upon separation from the older woman’s body, achieves discursive and material agency while it, in commercial surrogacy cases, is reframed as the exploitation of a less empowered, non-intimate other woman.