'I've always thought I would tell everything to my son’. The disclosure of origin stories to offspring after surrogacy as a strategy of counter-stigmatisation

ARIZA, LUCÍA

Conferencia; III Congreso Internacional REPROMOB Entre embates conservadores y conquistas de derechos: vulnerabilidades, inequidades y justicia reproductiva; 2024

Universidad de Buenos Aires

This paper aims to explore the ways in which Argentine women who have become mothers through surrogacy carried out in Ukraine, deal with surrounding discrimination and/or lack of understanding of their reproductive journeys. The paper argues that careful management of information, including selective disclosure to close relatives and friends, being open to their children about their origins, and ‘not engaging’ with inadvertent prejudiced comments on the part of distant others, are part of strategies that aim to manage discrimination. These strategies are analysed, as well, as part of ‘resistance subjectivities’ that are in the process of being (re)configured in the context of (new) right wing backlashes and the reinvigoration of neoconservative discourses in Argentina and the region.