The Question of Agency: A Postcolonial Approach to the Political Discourse on Surrogacy in Sweden

Abstract: The aim of this thesis is to explore how the agency of women who take part in surrogacy arrangements is addressed in the political discourse on surrogacy in Sweden. Surrogacy is and remains a both controversial and ethically complex issue that is intensely discussed on the public agenda in Sweden. Surrogacy arrangements are not permitted within the Swedish health system but is otherwise unregulated which means that no legislation regulates the fact that Swedish citizens take part in commercial surrogacy arrangements abroad. The thesis attempts to present a discourse analysis that examines how the Swedish Government official report “Different Paths to Parenthood SOU 2016:11” and three referral statements submitted in response to the inquiry address the issue of agency and self-determination in the context of surrogacy. The thesis further seeks to position the political discourse on surrogacy more explicitly within a postcolonial feminist framework. After conducting the analysis, I determine that agency is constructed according to the two dominant discourses of humanism and exploitation. Whereon actors in favour of surrogacy construct it as a matter of autonomy, bodily self-determination and empowerment, while actors against surrogacy construct it in terms of constrained agency and as an exploitation of socioeconomically disadvantaged women. I conclude that to construct the choice to become a surrogate as empowering merely based on self-determination, autonomy and free choice without taking into consideration that this happens within broader exploitative contexts, overlooks the structural inequalities in which women exercises their agency.