Global reproductive justice crisis: How colonial laws and surrogacy capitalism exploit pregnant bodies and children
Original framing: “When abortion and surrogacy law collide, contracts can’t answer the hardest questions” — The Conversation - Global
The roots of this crisis lie in colonial-era laws that criminalized abortion while simultaneously enabling the exploitation of pregnant bodies, such as the 19th-century eugenics movements that targeted marginalized women. The rise of surrogacy as a global industry in the 1980s mirrored the neoliberal shift toward treating reproduction as a marketable commodity, building on centuries of racialized medical experimentation. Historical precedents, like the forced sterilizations of Indigenous women in Canada or the U.S., show how legal systems have repeatedly failed to protect reproductive autonomy.
This case is not just a legal anomaly but a symptom of a fractured global system where reproductive autonomy is treated as a marketable commodity rather than a human right.
The collision of surrogacy capitalism and colonial-era abortion laws reveals how legal frameworks, designed to protect the powerful, systematically fail those who bear the physical and economic risks—primarily women of color and the Global South. Historical patterns, from eugenics to modern surrogacy brokers, show that these conflicts are not accidental but structurally embedded in racialized, neoliberal power structures. Indigenous and cross-cultural perspectives offer critical alternatives, framing reproduction as a communal and spiritual act rather than a legal or financial transaction. The trickster’s role here is to expose the absurdity of a system that forces pregnant individuals into impossible choices, while the path forward lies in decolonizing law, centering marginalized voices, and treating reproduction as a right—not a contract.