Surrogate Motherhood-- Interview with Elly Teman
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22 APRIL 1, 2010 •NISSAN 17, 5770 JEWISH REVIEW BY DEBORAH MOON Jewish Review While a Portland native’s new book on surrogacy focuses on a study in Israel, the country with the world’s first and most exten- sive surrogacy regulations, the hu- man experience of dealing with that strange situation is common to other surrogates around the world. Elly Teman’s “Birthing a Mother: The Surrogate Body and the Pregnant Self,” published March 4 by University of Califor- nia Press, is based on the author’s PhD dissertation research at He- brew University in Jerusalem. A third-generation Portland native, Teman attended Hillel Academy and Congregation Shaarie Torah, where her grandparents Ruth and Robert Erlich are still members. Her great-grandmother Tillie Nepom arrived in Portland in 1913 at the age of 13, just months older than Teman was when she moved to Israel with her parents Rhisa and Nissan Teman at age 12½. Israel’s “Embryo Carrying Agreements Law” had just legal- ized gestational surrogacy when Teman began her graduate studies. She said she immediately thought it would be a great anthropologi- cal case study. She began her PhD studies in 1998, just after the first surrogate birth in Israel, which “went wrong” and drew intense scrutiny of “what not to do in sur- rogacy,” she said. The resulting furor created even more intense regulation of surrogacy in Israel. A cultural anthropologist, Teman decided to look at the strange situation of a couple hav- ing another woman carry their baby and how the surrogate deals with “being pregnant while not expecting a baby.” “The human experience of making sense of this predicament is common to other surrogates in other places,” she said. Teman said all couples consid- ering surrogacy fear that the sur- rogate mother will bond with the baby, such as in the famed Baby M case in which the surrogate mother fought a court battle to retain custody of the baby. “When you read this book and listen to the words of women act- ing as surrogates, they are making informed, rational decisions,” said Teman, noting that in Israel the women are gestational surrogates who conceive through invitro fertil- ization rather than the artificial in- semination that made Baby M the genetic daughter of the surrogate. “They see how high the stakes are for the technology to work and they see how much the couple has riding on it to become parents,” she said. “From the beginning, surrogates talk about dividing themselves … referring to their belly area as ‘not me.’ They have to mark their limits to remember where their boundaries are.” In Israel, a small country where the farthest surrogates could live from the couple is four hours, sur- rogates often form strong bonds with the couple for whom they are carrying a child, Teman said. She added that sharing a lan- guage and culture also help unite them. (Israeli law requires the host and genetic mother to be the same religion). “They (surrogate mothers) don’t want to be choked and tak- en over, but they do want to share the experience with the ‘intended mother’ (as the genetic mother is known in Israeli law),” she said. The intended mother fre- quently accompanies the sur- rogate to all doctor’s appointe- ments, takes home the ultrasound pictures and does the things they think pregnant women do. The mother is usually with the surro- gate during the birth process. Teman said that “they transition into being a mother through the process.” She said some of the wom- en she studied actually had a pseudo pregnancy, gaining weight and feel- ing contractions. Two women, with no hormone injections, spontane- ously developed breast milk. In Israel, the laws aid the pro- cess, calling the surrogate the “carrying mother” and the biolog- ical mother the “intended moth- er.” Culturally, the difference is even stronger with the surrogate commonly being referred to as an “Innkeeper, who is hosting this family coming into being.” Israeli law, originally written to ensure children were halachically Jewish, has expanded over the years to protect the surrogate’s mental and physical health, as well as the intended parents’ rights. A state committee must approve every surrogate arrange- ment. The committee screens the surrogate and the couple psycho- logically and medically screens the surrogate. The committee ensures the contract is valid and that it provides for contingencies such as what happens if the baby has a birth defect or who will the guardians be if the parents die be- fore the birth. Conversely in the United States, regulations vary from state to state and even between differ- ent surrogate agencies in the same state. In Israel, Teman said surro- gates are much more open about being paid for their effort. All Is- raeli surrogates are single women, many single mothers who use the money to raise their own children. “It doesn’t mean it’s not a mitzvah just because they are us- ing the money to get ahead,” Te- man said the surrogates reason. Teman is now a research fel- low at the Penn Center for the Integration of Genetic Health- care Technologies at the Univer- sityh of Pennsylvania, where she is studying how ultra-Orthodox women make decisions on prena- tal genetic tests. Health ELLY TEMAN Ex-Portlander’s surrogacy book draws on Israel study
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Article on Elly Teman's research on surrogate motherhood in the Jewish Review http://www.jewishreview.org/health/science/Ex-Portlanders-surrogacy-book-draws-on-Israel-study'Birthing a Mother: The Surrogate Body and the Pregnant Self'by Elly TemanUniversity of California Press, February 2010Sample chapter available on book website:http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn...For a 20% discount enter code: 10M9071
Transcript of Surrogate Motherhood-- Interview with Elly Teman
22 APRIL1,2010•NISSAN17,5770 JEWISHREVIEW
BY DEBORAH MOONJewish Review
While a Portland native’s new book on surrogacy focuses on a study in Israel, the country with the world’s first and most exten-sive surrogacy regulations, the hu-man experience of dealing with that strange situation is common to other surrogates around the world. Elly Teman’s “Birthing a Mother: The Surrogate Body and the Pregnant Self,” published March 4 by University of Califor-nia Press, is based on the author’s PhD dissertation research at He-brew University in Jerusalem. A third-generation Portland native, Teman attended Hillel Academy and Congregation Shaarie Torah, where her grandparents Ruth and Robert Erlich are still members. Her great-grandmother Tillie Nepom arrived in Portland in 1913 at the age of 13, just months older than Teman was when she moved to Israel with her parents Rhisa and Nissan Teman at age 12½. Israel’s “Embryo Carrying Agreements Law” had just legal-ized gestational surrogacy when Teman began her graduate studies. She said she immediately thought it would be a great anthropologi-cal case study. She began her PhD studies in 1998, just after the first surrogate birth in Israel, which “went wrong” and drew intense scrutiny of “what not to do in sur-
rogacy,” she said. The resulting furor created even more intense regulation of surrogacy in Israel. A cultural anthropologist, Teman decided to look at the strange situation of a couple hav-ing another woman carry their baby and how the surrogate deals with “being pregnant while not expecting a baby.” “The human experience of making sense of this predicament is common to other surrogates in other places,” she said. Teman said all couples consid-ering surrogacy fear that the sur-rogate mother will bond with the baby, such as in the famed Baby M case in which the surrogate mother fought a court battle to retain custody of the baby. “When you read this book and
listen to the words of women act-ing as surrogates, they are making informed, rational decisions,” said Teman, noting that in Israel the women are gestational surrogates who conceive through invitro fertil-ization rather than the artificial in-semination that made Baby M the genetic daughter of the surrogate. “They see how high the stakes are for the technology to work and they see how much the couple has riding on it to become parents,” she said. “From the beginning, surrogates talk about dividing themselves … referring to their belly area as ‘not me.’ They have to mark their limits to remember where their boundaries are.” In Israel, a small country where the farthest surrogates could live from the couple is four hours, sur-
rogates often form strong bonds with the couple for whom they are carrying a child, Teman said. She added that sharing a lan-guage and culture also help unite them. (Israeli law requires the host and genetic mother to be the same religion). “They (surrogate mothers) don’t want to be choked and tak-en over, but they do want to share the experience with the ‘intended mother’ (as the genetic mother is known in Israeli law),” she said. The intended mother fre-quently accompanies the sur-rogate to all doctor’s appointe-ments, takes home the ultrasound pictures and does the things they think pregnant women do. The mother is usually with the surro-gate during the birth process. Teman said that “they transition into being a mother through the process.” She said some of the wom-en she studied actually had a pseudo pregnancy, gaining weight and feel-ing contractions. Two women, with no hormone injections, spontane-ously developed breast milk. In Israel, the laws aid the pro-cess, calling the surrogate the “carrying mother” and the biolog-ical mother the “intended moth-er.” Culturally, the difference is even stronger with the surrogate commonly being referred to as an “Innkeeper, who is hosting this family coming into being.” Israeli law, originally written to
ensure children were halachically Jewish, has expanded over the years to protect the surrogate’s mental and physical health, as well as the intended parents’ rights. A state committee must approve every surrogate arrange-ment. The committee screens the surrogate and the couple psycho-logically and medically screens the surrogate. The committee ensures the contract is valid and that it provides for contingencies such as what happens if the baby has a birth defect or who will the guardians be if the parents die be-fore the birth. Conversely in the United States, regulations vary from state to state and even between differ-ent surrogate agencies in the same state. In Israel, Teman said surro-gates are much more open about being paid for their effort. All Is-raeli surrogates are single women, many single mothers who use the money to raise their own children. “It doesn’t mean it’s not a mitzvah just because they are us-ing the money to get ahead,” Te-man said the surrogates reason. Teman is now a research fel-low at the Penn Center for the Integration of Genetic Health-care Technologies at the Univer-sityh of Pennsylvania, where she is studying how ultra-Orthodox women make decisions on prena-tal genetic tests.
Health
ELLY TEMAN
Ex-Portlander’s surrogacy book draws on Israel study
To order online: www.ucpress.edu/9780520259645
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Birthing a MotherThe Surrogate Body and the Pregnant Selfelly TeMan
“Birthing a Mother is brilliant and beautifully written. it showcas-es Teman’s great skills as an ethnographer and her sophisticated analytic mind. she portrays all her subjects with empathy and compassion, whether surrogates, intended parents, or profes-sionals otherwise involved in the reproductive procedures she documents.”—charis Thompson, author of Making Parents
“Teman deftly portrays surrogacy as a joint project through which one woman assists another, through sacrifice and instruction, to become also a mother.”
—heather Paxson, author of Making Modern Mothers
Birthing a Mother is the first ethnography to probe the intimate experience of gestational surrogate motherhood. In this beautifully written and insightful book, Elly Teman shows how surrogates and intended mothers carefully negotiate their cooperative endeavor. Drawing on anthropological fieldwork among Jewish Israeli women, interspersed with cross-cultural perspectives of surrogacy in the global context, Teman traces the processes by which surrogates relinquish any maternal claim to the baby even as intended moth-ers accomplish a complicated transition to motherhood. Teman’s groundbreaking analysis reveals that as surrogates psychologically and emotionally disengage from the fetus they carry, they develop a profound and lasting bond with the intended mother.
elly Teman is a Research Fellow at the Penn Center for the Integration of Genetic Healthcare Technologies at the University of Pennsylvania.
368 pages, 6 x 9”, 11 b/w photographs, 1 line illustration$55.00 cloth 978-0-520-25963-8 $21.95 paper 978-0-520-25964-5
