Nordic Surrogates: The Political and Media Construction of Surrogacy in the Nordic Countries

The NORSUR project examines how surrogacy is framed in Nordic politics, and how Nordic citizens have practiced surrogacy both domestically and across borders. The methods are interviews and rhetorical and discursive analysis of policy documents, political debates and medical journals in the Nordic countries, focusing primarily on Finland and Norway. The first part of the project was devoted to policy analysis of Finnish and Norwegian parliamentary debates and legal sources relating to surrogacy and assisted reproductive technologies. In the second part of the project, interviews were conducted with Finnish surrogate mothers and Finnish intended parents. The project studies how surrogacy reinforces or challenges the perceptions of the categories woman, motherhood and kinship. It analyses how surrogacy is constructed as a social problem in public discourse, and how this transnational issue is contextualised in the Nordic societies. Surrogacy has not been extensively studied in Finland previously, despite the fact that altruistic surrogacy was practiced at Finnish clinics from 1991 to 2007. By analysing altruistic unpaid surrogacy arrangements in Finland, the NORSUR project provides a new focus to surrogacy research in the Nordic countries as it goes beyond the previous research focus on commercial surrogacy and cross-border reproductive care.