The woman or the egg? Race in egg donation and surrogacy databases.

Harrison, Laura

[1] "Smart, confident, and gorgeous ... a real 10!" This attention-grabbing headline can be found in a database of potential egg donors, positioned above a picture of a fair-skinned young woman along with her height (5'9"), eye color (green), and hair color (blonde). In this database, profiles of young, talented, and beautiful women compete for the attention of prospective parents searching for the genetic contributor to an imagined child. Should they choose "smart, confident, and gorgeous," or "responsible, intelligent, ethical, and good-hearted?" Do they select the "blonde, Jewish firefighter in Israel" to carry on a religious and cultural heritage? Will any of these traits surface in their future child through genetic inheritance?

[2] These are a few of the questions faced by intended parents who seek an egg donor through a commercial agency. Further complicating the situation is the fact that some intended parents require not only an egg donor but also a gestational surrogate to gestate the fertilized egg. In contrast to traditional surrogacy, in which the egg of the surrogate is inseminated with the sperm of the prospective father or a donor, gestational surrogates share no biological connection to the fetus(es) they carry. The vast majority of documented surrogacy arrangements in the United States today are gestational, due in large part to advancements in reproductive technologies allowing for egg donation and in vitro fertilization. Intended parents in the market for reproductive services are faced with the fraught processes of choosing donors and surrogates, and attributing significance to the contributions of those selected.

[3] Traits ranging from racial identity to creativity and compassion are coded as heritable in the contemporary United States. Yet there is a contradiction between the commodification of race in the reproductive-services market and the last several decades of scientific research "proving" that race has no biological basis. Despite this scientific evidence, Americans remain obsessed with genetics, as demonstrated in the deployment of race in the reproductive technology industry. At times, racial difference is made quite explicit in the assisted reproductive technology (ART) industry, such as when intended parents select an egg donor with a racial background that "matches" their own. At other times, especially when intended parents are choosing a gestational surrogate, racial difference is dismissed as inconsequential to ART outcomes.

[4] This essay analyzes databases of egg donors and surrogates compiled by agencies that connect intended parents with reproductive service providers. Profiles of egg donors showcase each woman's physical characteristics, personality traits, and individual talents, while surrogacy databases largely focus on the practical questions of reproductive history, lifestyle (such as tobacco and alcohol use), and remuneration. I contend that this difference reflects an understanding of reproduction that privileges the power of genetics over gestation. Moreover, the deployment of race in these databases is inconsistent, as is the fragmented discourse on race in America more generally.

[5] I build my theoretical argument by examining scientific discourses on race and genomics as a multivalent arena of knowledge production--following the contributions of feminist science studies, I view scientific practice as situated, embodied, and culturally contingent. Here I examine how scientific assertions of the biological meaninglessness of race largely fail to trickle down into the popular consciousness, and how this failure is abetted by the continued use of race as a meaningful category of analysis in reproductive medicine.

The Commodification of Race

[6] In the introduction to Revisiting Race in a Genomic Age, editors Barbara Koenig, Sandra Soo-Jin Lee, and Sarah Richardson argue that what they call "post-genomic science" has revitalized, rather than undermined, the use of racial categories to stand in for biological difference (1). The end of the twentieth century witnessed an increase in scientific research exploring a biological basis for race, despite the widely touted finding that human beings share 99.9 percent genetic similarity (Reardon). This statistic from the Human Genome Project was meant to display the commonalities of all humankind, yet Lee contends that science has since seen a "turn towards difference" that challenges this figure ("Racial Realism" 342). Within the last several years, population geneticists have published research based on the argument that "the genome holds the key to medically and forensically significant biological differences among human racial and ethnic populations" (Koenig, Soo-Jin Lee, and Richardson 1). In other words, some population geneticists claim that the differences between races, however minute, are pertinent for scientific research because they can reveal such important information as the etiology of diseases and indicate the most effective type of treatments (Soo-Jin Lee, "Biobanks").

[7] Prominent geneticists argue that traditional racial categories such as African, Asian, and Caucasian will continue to serve as proxies for genetic variation until individual genotyping makes these placeholders irrelevant. By studying these differences, they contend, medical researchers can create race-based therapies that will impact racial health disparities (Sankar). Supporters of race-based medicine assert that this research provides a positive counterbalance to the marginalization of the unique health issues faced by people of color in the United States (Condit and Bates). However, Lee interprets this data differently: she argues that the turn toward difference is in fact a stubborn refusal to accept the disarticulation of race from genes ("Racial Realism"). By focusing on genetic differences between racially identified groups and then targeting those groups for medical treatment, genetics are racialized and outdated notions of race are reified.

[8] The racialization of genes is a component of kinship construction, which is a highly negotiated process in fertility clinics. Patients choose which aspects of kinship they will foreground and which they will minimize in order to legitimize the status of the intended parents as "real parents" (Thompson, Making Parents). Thus prospective parents often choose egg and sperm donors based on what they consider genetic likeness to themselves and/or markers of socially dominant characteristics but they choose surrogates using different standards, including the number of successful pregnancies the surrogate has had, her age and health, and her mental health history (Thompson, Making Parents). Prospective parents using ARTs are able to negotiate what they consider to be genetic, natural, or shared in reproduction, but genes are "perceived to have the power to explain who one is, what one will become, how one is connected to others, and what might happen to one in the future" (Mamo 194). That identity categories like religious affiliation, sexuality, and race cannot be transferred through genetic material is incidental--ideology produces the elision between the social and the biological that is then translated into medical "fact" through practice. This process creates a feedback system in which the cultural bypasses the scientific (intended parents choose donors whose religious/ethnic identities are similar to their own based on the belief that these traits are genetic). Commercially motivated practices (egg donation and surrogacy) construct a facade of authoritative "evidence" (donor banks organized by race and religion, for example) to support the socially constructed fantasy.

[9] Both the consumers and practitioners of reproductive technologies are deeply invested in "geneticization," or "the extreme reduction of all problematic differences to an individual and genetic basis" (Rapp 39). Geneticization is so thoroughly enmeshed in contemporary understandings of pregnancy that almost all differences, whether problematic or positive, are attributed to genes and thus viewed through a "prism of heritability" (Browner and Press 307). In what Silja Samerski calls "the popular scientific imagination," genes are held accountable for a vast array of individual attributes, including physical features as well as more amorphous qualities such as personal likes and dislikes, or drug and alcohol use (713). These qualities then adhere to gametes that can be bought and sold on the free market, such that eggs or sperm are perceived actually to be white, black, Jewish--even healthy or sick --based on the medical history of the donor (Mamo).

[10] Geneticization goes hand in hand with the commodification of race in the reproductive technology industry. As genetic determinism takes on the status of scientific "fact," despite claims by scientists to the contrary, the industry markets "genomic fetishes" to American consumers (Rajan 143). The mainstream scientific consensus is that race is not a biological phenomenon but rather a complex historical, social, political, and scientific construct. In sharp contrast, companies that profit from the sale of sperm or eggs seamlessly transfer the self-identification of the donor to the disembodied gamete. Some clinics literalize this elision by color-coding sperm vials--white for Caucasian, black for African American, and yellow for Asian (Schmidt and Moore). While scientific debates challenge such notions, in practice individuals negotiate the meaning of concepts such as race, genes, or religion to correspond with their reproductive goals.

Building a Baby: Egg Donation and Surrogacy

[11] When Helena Ragone published her groundbreaking ethnographic research on surrogacy in 1994 she stated that there were eight "established commercial surrogate mother programs" as well as "a number of individuals who arrange surrogacy contracts on a free-lance or occasional basis" (13). Today surrogacy in the United States has expanded into a multimillion-dollar industry (Byrn and Holcomb). California leads the country in the sheer number of surrogacy agencies--that state alone produces more surrogate-born babies than the next two leading nations, Israel and the United Kingdom, combined (Teman). Without federal requirements for licensing or direct governmental oversight, there are no comprehensive records on the number or reputability of surrogacy agencies in a given state. This lack of regulation results in a multifaceted array of service providers--one can find a gestational carrier by advertising in local newspapers, the online forum Craigslist.com, independently operated websites, or through matching processes at well-established surrogacy brokers. Agencies are also created by former surrogates on the merits of their personal experience. According to University of Southern California law professor Alexander Capron, "In most U.S. states until recently, nothing would stop you from opening 'Sam's Sperm Bank and Delicatessen'" (Plotz T05).

[12] In response to these factors, I have limited my analysis of egg donation and surrogacy agencies in two ways. First, I have narrowed the list of agencies to those listed on the websites of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM), a leading reproductive medicine advocacy group, and RESOLVE: The National Infertility Association. I chose to analyze egg donation and surrogacy agencies that are found on the ASRM and RESOLVE websites because as a professional agency and patient advocacy group, respectively, these two organizations are well established and trusted by patients and practitioners. The RESOLVE website contains a page listing "third party reproduction service providers" that are professional members of the organization. ASRM's website includes a list of egg donor agencies that have signed an agreement with the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technologies (SART) to abide by the rules set by ASRM's Ethics and Practice committee guidelines (including financial compensation of egg donors, limits on repeated egg donation cycles, and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA). I compared these two lists, and selected only the agencies that were named on both sites.

[13] From this list, I selected commercial agencies that offer both egg donation and surrogacy matching services; I limited my analysis in this way in order to contrast how certain traits such as race and ethnicity are deployed in profiles of egg donors and surrogates both within and between agencies. Of the thirty agencies that met these criteria and had active websites, this essay will specifically discuss content from the websites of twelve agencies, which have been given pseudonyms of Agency A-L. Here my analysis of the content on these websites is qualitative: when accessible, I looked at profiles of surrogates and donors to compare physical descriptions, including the categorization of race, ethnicity, ancestry, and phenotype. I also compared the background information gathered about surrogates and donors such as hobbies, education, and career aspiration in order to analyze in what instances these traits were cast as heritable. I further evaluated websites holistically, including visual imagery and the language used to describe intended parents, surrogates, and donors, as well as a sampling of the applications that intended parents, egg donors, and surrogates filled out as the first step in the matching process. Four themes emerged as particularly salient in my analysis of agency websites: the deployment of the terms "race" and "ethnicity," the inclusion of what are considered phenotypic markers of race in donor profiles, the question of heritable traits, and the fundamental differences between profiles of surrogates and egg donors.

What is on the market--the donor or the egg?

[14] While ASRM recommends that compensation of more than $5,000 for an egg donor "requires justification" and that more than $10,000 is "not appropriate," compliance with this recommendation is voluntary. Compensation varies between agencies, and even donors within the same agency receive different levels of remuneration based on their own level of altruism, past donor experience, and the value placed upon their characteristics (The Ethics Committee of ASRM). One agency famously put out an advertisement in Ivy League campus newspaper in 1999 offering $50,000 for a donor with an SAT score of 1400, a height of at least 5'10," and no family history of medical problems (Spar). The agency refers to this ad on its website but notes that it complies with ASRM guidelines and offers "many intelligent, talented and attractive egg donors who ask for very reasonable compensation."

[15] Intended parents typically view the profiles of potential egg donors through online databases. Similar to what other researchers have found regarding sperm banks, egg donor profiles generally provide three different types of information: phenotypic characteristics (such as race, ethnicity, skin tone, and eye color), biological characteristics (blood type, reproductive history, family health history), and social characteristics (including personality, hobbies, and occupation) (Schmidt and Moore). Describing donors through these categories serves to segment the market, but it also ranks differences between donors according to socially desirable characteristics (Moore).

[16] The breadth in which egg donor profiles assess the personality of a donor varies greatly from agency to agency, yet the vast majority attempt to give intended parents some window into the character of the woman. As other scholars have noted, recipients of gamete donation are encouraged to "rematerialize" donors through the information provided about their appearance, lifestyle, and medical history (Mamo 203). While it is the eggs of the donor that will be purchased by intended parents, it is the donor as a whole that is represented through extensive personal histories. The elision between egg and donor is significant because it gives the impression of a genetic "package" available for purchase, which biologizes and commodifies a wide range of complex traits and identities including race and ethnicity.

[17] On Agency A's website, egg donors are asked to check the boxes that apply to them so that intended parents can search by keyword to view donors that match these characteristics. The options include artist, athlete, dancer, animal lover, reader, and traveler, which are listed alongside geographical areas, nationalities, and religions such as Scandinavian, Middle Eastern, Jewish, and Western European. The confluence of categories about ancestry with those concerning personal likes and dislikes implies that all of these characteristics are heritable, and equally so. The donor profiles available on some databases are even more extensive. While many profiles include a self-description of the donor's character and personality, her hobbies and interests, and why she wants to donate an egg, others include long lists of "favorites" (book, movie, food) as well as philosophical questions such as how one handles adversity or the importance of spirituality in one's life. Agency B, which has extensive donor profiles, also includes a section titled "Just for Fun" that includes questions about whether the donor sings in the shower, is a good cook, and what kind of animal she would like to be and why.

[18] The tenor of these questions is reminiscent of dating websites, which match singles based on supposedly "scientific" measures of compatibility. Agency C, for example, formats its donor profiles in the style of a traditional dating website or personal ad, with each donor's basic statistics (prior donation, height, eye color, and hair color) listed next to their picture, captioned with headlines such as "God's gift to you," "Jewish Blonde in Canada," "Professional, Athletic, and Gorgeous," and "Striking Israeli Loves to Keep Active." This format is what Moore and Schmidt refer to as a "discourse template," or a way to organize novel information in a manner that an audience can understand and quickly interpret. In a study of sperm banks, Moore and Schmidt found that sperm donor profiles were organized through formats with which users were already familiar because they "create comfort zones and mitigate the strangeness of the new market" (Schmidt and Moore 30).

[19] There is a certain heteronormativity to the layout of donor databases (both sperm and egg) in that the process of judging individuals based on their proximity to a mythic ideal oddly mimics the "old-fashioned" method of partner selection and heterosexual reproduction. The twist, of course, is that heterosexual sex is made obsolete through the very disaggregation of reproductive components that such databases allow. While agencies do not always explicitly use the personal ad template, they nonetheless organize profiles in a manner that allows users to sort and quickly rank large amounts of data (sometimes hundreds of donor profiles). This system implies that it is the influence of genetics more than environment that determines social characteristics. Such a perspective is reflected in a quote by Liz Mundy, the author of numerous publications on ARTs, in a 2006 article in the Washington Post. The use of ARTs, Mundy argues,

   is becoming widespread at precisely the moment when we've become
   ultra aware of how genes run the show in the unfolding of a human
   being: controlling everything from physical attributes such as
   height and hair color to a predisposition for certain illnesses to
   a tendency toward shyness or a taste for fine wine (B01).

For intended parents choosing an egg or sperm donor, this narrative suggests that parenting begins with the selection of genetic materials--a selection that will dominate their child's future.

Race and Ethnicity

[20] Race is one of the characteristics universally noted in donor profiles, although agencies differ in how they represent this factor. While some agencies draw from the categories used in the U.S. census, racial categories are not standardized, and many omit the term "race" altogether in favor of "ethnicity." Agency D formats its database to allow intended parents to narrow their search criteria by selecting race and ethnicity from separate drop-down menus. The first menu lists Asian, Black, Caucasian, East Indian, Hispanic, Middle Eastern, and Native American as possible options for race, while the ethnicity menu consists of seventy-five categories, from nationalities (Canadian, Brazilian, Zairian), to the aforementioned races, to what some would term "ethnic cultures" such as Creole and Jewish.

[21] While this database differentiates between race and ethnicity (albeit through a counterintuitive strategy of classification), many facilities rely upon donor self-identification rather than a menu of racial/ethnic options. As a result, race, ethnicity, nationality, and ancestry are frequently elided; the donor's self-identification reflects her personal understanding of ethnicity or race and creates variation both within and between databases. Many donors who identify as Caucasian, for example, describe their ethnicity through reference to ancestral country of origin; on Agency E's website, one donor who describes her skin complexion as "very fair" lists under ethnic origin the descriptors Italian, English, Irish, and Caucasian. In contrast, within the same database a donor who describes her complexion as "medium" lists African American as her sole ethnic origin.

[22] The question of how to identify one's race is not always self-evident or dependent solely on one's own understanding of ethnicity or ancestry, as sociologist Janet Shim discovered. In interviews, Shim's informants argued that it was the external social perception of their race (others identifying them as black or Hispanic) that created pressure to categorize themselves according to the race that others ascribed to them. Shim concludes that the comments of her informants "underscore how race becomes consequential through the social significance that is invested in it and imposed by others, rather than being a self selected attribute by an individual presumably free to choose" (Shim 409). These findings are significant for my study because egg donor and surrogate databases often rely on donor self-identification. Shim's research suggests that self-identification is an "ascribed characteristic," always in response to the racializing social gaze (409).

[23] While Caucasian is used as a broad racial category in donor databases, it does seem that generic whiteness is being called into question through these profiles. Because intended parents are using donor profiles to create "affinity ties" between themselves and their future children, the normative fiction of a monolithic white identity is cast aside in favor of the specificity of ancestral heritage (Mamo 231). This desire to trace the donor's "roots" for likeness with intended parents reflects an investment in genetic determinism, undergirded by the belief that there is something consequential to learn from ancestry. Moreover, these affinity ties are about more than straightforward physical or racial "matching"; the likeness that intended parents seek concerns "an imagined future connection forged through shared ancestry, hobbies, and other more cultural attributes" (Mamo 205).

[24] Agency C's website succinctly captures this motivation, stating that it "works closely with our Loving Couples and Loving Mothers to achieve their goals by matching them with desirable egg donors based upon a variety of considerations: ethnicity, coloring, height, athleticism, intelligence, artistic ability, etc." Agency F promotes what it calls "ethnic-specific oocyte donation" as one of its three main services. The focus on ethnic specificity is reflected in this agency's egg donor database, where donors break down their ethnic background by percentages. The idea that race or ancestry can be distributed into discrete percentages reinforces the myth of racial purity. As Dorothy Roberts argues in Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-create Race in the Twenty-First Century, "we can only imagine someone to be a quarter European if we have a concept of someone who is 100 percent European" (228). This type of understanding of race, in which race and ethnicity can be neatly divided into discrete percentages, has been bolstered in recent years by the rising popularity of recreational genetics (also known as direct-to-consumer genetic ancestry testing). Professor Henry Louis Gates introduced this type of testing to a wide audience with the documentary African American Lives, which initially aired in 2006. Many scientists are left with concerns regarding direct-to-consumer genetics: not only can this information upset an individual's sense of identity and community, but as Deborah Bolnick et al. argue in Science magazine, there is no necessary correlation between one's DNA and the contemporary social categories of race and ethnicity:

Worldwide patterns of human genetic diversity are weakly correlated with racial and ethnic categories because both are partially correlated with geography. Current understandings of race and ethnicity reflect more than genetic relatedness, though, having been defined in particular sociohistorical contexts (i.e. European and American colonialism). In addition, social relationships and life experiences have been as important as biological ancestry in shaping individual identity and group membership (Bolnick et al. 400).

Direct-to-consumer genetic testing is a business, with financial motivations to commodify race and ethnicity in ways that will appeal to consumers. Egg donor agencies face similar motivations. Listing donor ethnicity in specific terms reifies race as a biological reality that will be reproduced through donor eggs.

[25] In addition to ethnicity, this database also categorizes donors by race, restricting the options to Caucasian, African American, American Indian or Alaskan Native, Asian or Pacific Islander, Hispanic, Multi-racial, or Other. In this database, it is primarily African American donors who list only one ethnicity, whereas Caucasian and other nonwhite donors catalog heritage or ancestry. As Dorothy Roberts notes in Fatal Invention, as a result of the slave trade African Americans have largely been limited in their ability to trace their ancestry to specific localities. Perhaps as a result, African-American donors are less likely to list ethnicities alongside their race than are white donors.

[26] It is common for agencies to list not only the ethnicity of the donor, but also that of her mother, father, and both maternal and paternal grandparents; this tracing of lineage encourages intended parents to seek out similarities between themselves and various aspects of the donor's history, thus actively constructing kinship. As Thompson points out, there are multiple tropes concerning genetics that are accessible to intended parents--those using donor eggs might embrace the idea that "genes code for racial distinctions, group inclusion and exclusion, and ethnic purity," while intended parents using their own gametes can access the coexisting trope, "that genes function as the thing that provides the definitive mark of individuality" (Making Parents 168). Genes are indeed "multivocal symbols" whose meanings are negotiated by the needs of intended parents, but also by donors and surrogates (Teman 112).

Phenotypic Markers of Race

[27] Egg donor profiles also address race and ethnicity through descriptions of physical attributes--complexion, hair texture, or eye color--also known as phenotype. Phenotype refers to "visible physical traits." Until scientific advancements of the 1960s, geneticists believed that these physical characteristics corresponded to genetic properties such that "the phenotype was held to be the realization of the genotype in the observable world" (Reardon, Race to the Finish 54). With the developments of molecular biology, the belief in a one-to-one correlation between phenotype and genotype made way for the theory that visible physical differences hid vast similarities between groups at the molecular level. This recalculation corresponded with a political context in which mainstream antiracist forces argued that the best way to fight racism was by downplaying racial difference and promoting an ideology of "colorblindness" (Reardon, Race to the Finish). As critics of this concept have thoroughly demonstrated, the idea of "colorblindness" as a panacea for racism not only ignores the reality of living in a white supremacist culture, but also the differential value placed upon light skin tone within various racial and ethnic groups; even members of the same group can be differentially racialized (Banks). The significance attributed to skin color in our culture gives it a form of "symbolic capital;" skin color has been evidenced to impact employment opportunities, perceptions of attractiveness, and even judgments regarding criminality (Glenn 166).

[28] As Thompson notes, the inclusion of skin tone in egg donor profiles suggests a belief that the skin tone of the donor (noting, of course, that the eggs themselves have no "skin" and thus no "tone") has the potential to be transmitted to the imagined child ("Skin Tone"). Despite the cultural significance attributed to skin tone, little consensus emerges across various egg donor databases as to how this trait should be categorized. The proliferation of online donor databases nearly guarantees that intended parents will "shop around" on the Internet, comparing the perceived quality of donors from site to site. Agencies are clearly aware of this potential; some market the selectivity with which they choose egg donors, while others promote the large number of donors in their database, or the way that their agency occupies a specific niche (all college-educated donors, or LGBT-friendly services). While intended parents might view the selection of race, ethnicity, and skin tone in a donor as an expression of their reproductive agency (Thompson, "Skin Tone"), the diversity with which databases describe various racialized phenotypic differences complicates efforts to systematically compare donor offerings.

[29] The database for Agency G, for example, limits the description of donor skin tones to fair, medium, or olive, while Agency E's database includes fair, medium, slight olive, medium olive, moderate olive, dark olive, and dark. The skin tone options listed by Agency H include pink and white in addition to the relatively common fair, medium, dark, and olive. Agency I, which specializes in the reproductive tourism industry of India, does not offer an online donor profile but instead states that it "matches the Intended Parent(s) with the egg donor who most closely physically resembles her in ethnicity, height, body build, skin type, eye color and hair color and texture." What this policy ignores is that "matching" is not always the ultimate goal--some intended parents select donor gametes based on qualities that they consider favorable or more socially privileged than their own (Thompson, "Skin Tone"). These are all very different means of categorizing skin tone; it is even possible that the complexion of one donor could be categorized entirely differently by each of these databases. Natural hair color, hair texture, or body (thick, fine), hair type (wave, curly, straight), and skin characteristics (freckles, moles, ability to tan) are also included in many of the databases, which combine with skin tone and self-described race and ethnicity to further racialize the egg.

[30] Visualizing techniques verify the description of phenotype in the donor profiles; many databases offer multiple pictures of the donor as an infant, child, and adult. Donors who have children of their own often include photos of them in online albums as evidence of what their genes are likely to produce, as well as proof of the donor's fertility. Intended parents can compare the descriptions of donors to their pictures as a way to verify the information that the donors present, and also to imagine how these characteristics could take form in their own potential children. As Rosalind Petchesky argues in "Fetal Images: The Power of Visual Culture," photographic images have the capacity "to assume two distinct meanings, often simultaneously: an empirical (informational) and a mythical (or magical) meaning" (405). Visual images of egg donors serve both purposes for intended parents, confirming (or conflicting with) the detailed physical descriptions elicited in lengthy donor profiles, and also offering up the potential blueprint of a future child.

[31] What these arrangements mask is that the perception of skin tone is not homogenous across racial and ethnic lines, nor is its meaning. A woman who identifies as white might list her skin tone as "medium" because she tans easily in the summer--a trait that is currently celebrated in white beauty culture. For example, a donor in Agency D's database lists her race as Caucasian and categorizes her skin type as "tan, not burn in the sun." A woman who identifies as African American, in contrast, might have a vastly different perception of "medium" skin tone, influenced in part by a culture that privileges light-skinned women of color in television, movies, and magazines. Indeed, the interpretation or "reading" of skin tone (even one's own) does not occur in a cultural vacuum; it is influenced by a variety of "marking systems" such as hair and fashion style, eye color, gender, language, and age (Thompson, "Skin Tone" 132).

[32] According to a study by Celeste M. Condit et al., lay people are likely to identify race by a person's physical appearance, with skin color as primary, but not sufficient, evidence of racial belonging. The researchers conclude that "lay people tend to believe that race is identified by appearance and that genes are responsible for appearance; therefore they believe that race has a genetic basis" (Condit et al. 260). This research supports the emphasis placed on phenotypic markers of race in egg donor profiles; if phenotype is viewed as largely genetic, and the most significant marker of racial difference, then intended parents will use multiple metrics (pictures, statistics such as height and weight, and self-identified ethnicity, race, and skin tone) to measure a donor's racial makeup.

Egg Donation vs. Surrogacy

[33] Prior to this analysis, I hypothesized that most websites would offer online databases through which intended parents could peruse the profiles of both donors and surrogates. At the least, I expected that those agencies with online egg donation databases would also have online surrogacy databases. This hypothesis was proven false within the given sample of agencies--only seven of the thirty agency websites included profiles of surrogates, and of those, I was granted permission to view four databases. It is possible that the remaining agencies may have had surrogacy databases or profiles that they sent to intended parents after screening, but did not offer online. Agency J, for example, posted several sample profiles of surrogates on its website, with the offer to send "mini-profiles" after a phone interview, and full profiles after signing up with the program. There are multiple reasons that it is less common for agencies to have surrogacy databases than egg donor databases. First, because many agencies have fewer surrogates than egg donors, they often match intended parents with surrogates on a case-by-case level. Second, the criteria for selecting a surrogate do not fit the aforementioned personal-ad template. Agencies match intended parents with surrogates based on factors such as location, whether the surrogate is willing to "reduce" (selectively abort) multiple or "unhealthy" fetuses, and whether the surrogate is willing to work with certain groups such as gay couples or singles. Moreover, as this section will demonstrate, the contrast between criteria for choosing a surrogate and for an egg donor reflects the fetishization of genetics and the compartmentalization of gestation.

[34] It is important to note that not all intended parents who contract with a gestational surrogate are also purchasing donor eggs and/or sperm. Indeed, many intended parents consider gestational surrogacy a preferable alternative to adoption because at least one of the parents will be genetically related to the future child. In Birthing a Mother, ethnographer Elly Teman finds that in Israel, gestation is believed to have no influence on the future child. The womb is "denuded of personal traits," whereas the egg is vested with a woman's feminine identity and genetic inheritance (55). Teman contrasts this to the United States, citing Ragone's classic research on women who served as both traditional and gestational surrogates to argue that Americans have a more flexible approach to the division of eggs and wombs.

[35] While I agree with Teman that intended parents in the United States place significance on the "environment" of the womb (with particular attention to alcohol and drug use), I interpret this as an extension of the current social and political climate in the United States that interpolates all pregnant women as potential threats to fetuses/children. Gestation is compartmentalized such that the surrogate is viewed as capable of affecting the safety of the womb (in largely negative ways), but, as in Israel, she is incapable of altering the individual "nature" that is predetermined by genetics. Intended parents in the United States might worry that a surrogate will harm "their" fetus by smoking cigarettes during her pregnancy but not that her bad temper or blonde hair will later materialize in their child-to-be.

[36] Where surrogacy databases do exist in this sample, they differ quite markedly from the egg donor databases created by the same program. The search page for Agency K's database asks visitors to the site to select whether they are seeking an egg donor or a surrogate. Intended parents are then prompted to narrow their search by ID, race, or location, but to select hair color, eye color, and height only if they are searching for an egg donor, not a surrogate. Likewise, the database for Agency H asks surrogates to fill out questions about race and ethnicity, height, weight, and education, but does not require the detailed description of physical characteristics asked of egg donors. This trend also shows up in the sample profiles of surrogates and egg donors offered by Agency F. While both egg donors and surrogates list their race and "ethnic history," only donors list complexion and hair type.

[37] These examples indicate that intended parents may find the race of their surrogate relevant, but not because they believe that her physical characteristics will manifest in their child. Rather, race (like gender) is a primary organizing principle in American society, and is thus a central identity category by which we "know" one another. Without being aware of the race of a surrogate, intended parents may feel that they are missing a piece of information that is crucial to their presumed knowledge of the candidate. The practice that I call "crossracial gestational surrogacy" (when intended parents commission a surrogate of a different racial background than their own) is also a growing phenomena, for reasons both economic and legal. Nonetheless, some intended parents undoubtedly remain hesitant to intermingle differently raced bodies at the intimate level of pregnancy. The same can be said for surrogates: Agency L's surrogacy application asks women if they would be willing to serve as a surrogate for a family of a different race, religion, or ethnic background, suggesting that some surrogates would not do so. Even in Teman's ethnography, in which intended parents firmly state that the race or ethnicity of the surrogate has no implications for their future child, Teman finds that parents need to reaffirm this knowledge after the child is born. One of the ways that individuals validate their new identity as parents, she contends, is by confirming their own resemblance to the child: "This preoccupation with the resemblance of the child to the intended parents seems to voice a retrospective fear that the baby could have mistakenly been the genetic offspring of the surrogate or that the surrogate could somehow have 'shaped' or affected the baby while it was in her womb" (Teman 199-200). Teman's findings suggest that despite attempts by all parties to naturalize the role of the surrogate as purely custodial, intended parents may internalize certain "risks" in using a surrogate that they are unable to dismiss entirely.

[38] In addition to race and ethnicity, profiles of surrogates generally have less information about educational history, hobbies, and special skills than do egg donor profiles. In the sample profiles on Agency F's website, both egg donors and surrogates are asked to list their educational aspirations, hobbies, and employment history, but only egg donors are asked about their special achievements and best subjects in school. Likewise, surrogates detail their medical history, but are not asked to report on their extended family health history and special achievements of family members. In an interesting reversal, surrogates are prompted to describe their diet, which in this profile includes the amount of water they drink as well as their vegetable and lean meat intake, while this question is not repeated for donors.

[39] Questions about diet, lifestyle, and exercise routine are common in surrogacy applications, and they are often followed by specific inquiries into tobacco, drug, and alcohol use. Again, this implies that the surrogate has the potential to affect the fetus through the environment of the womb, but that her educational aptitude or capacity for achievement is immaterial. Many feminist scholars have drawn connections between representations of the womb as an environment and the erasure of the woman as the primary agent (and patient) in a pregnancy. As Lauren Berlant argues, "the maternal body has been redefined as a disaster movie waiting to happen, or a technical 'environment' that makes the fetus vulnerable to toxic invasions via the mother's mouth, veins or vagina" (113). I agree with Berlant's assessment of the effects of visualizing technologies such as ultrasound on the maternal-fetal relationship, but would add that in the case of surrogacy the stakes are slightly different. While surrogates are vulnerable to the policing of their bodies and behavior, the management of their pregnancies by third-party sources is typically a prerequisite to entering this highly mediated pregnancy experience. Surrogates are usually primed to define themselves as vessels, delineating their own subjectivity from that of the fetus.

[40] This perspective is reflected in how agency websites set up the databases and search functions for surrogates. In this sample, the format of surrogacy databases indicates function or practicality as opposed to the dating site-like layout for egg donors. For example, the search function for Agency A's database divides surrogates into groups such as West Coast/East Coast, those carrying insurance, repeat surrogates, "value" surrogates (those willing to charge $20,000 or less), and "flexible" surrogates (those open to "reduction or termination for medical or personal reasons"). Agency D also lists practical questions regarding fees, insurance, willingness to reduce or terminate, and openness to working with gay or single intended parents. The more in-depth questions for surrogates are generally related to the level of support they have from their families (many programs require that the surrogate provide the written consent of her husband or partner), their birth experiences, lifestyle, career focus, and motivation for becoming a surrogate.

[41] An additional theme that emerged in this sample was the divergent visual representations of donors versus surrogates. Egg donor profiles generally contain more than one picture of the donor--if multiple photographs are posted, it is common to include a picture of the donor in formal clothing (at a prom or wedding), as a child, and with her own children if applicable. When surrogates are visually represented, they are nearly always depicted with their families. These include pregnancy pictures and photos of the surrogate with her children or partner. It is far less common to see pictures of egg donors in the frame with other people; in fact, many of the pictures that donors post are clearly cropped to remove friends, relatives, or partners from the images.

[42] Why is it important to represent surrogates with their partners and children, or in the late stages of pregnancy? Both egg donors and surrogates are being appropriately gendered through these visualization techniques, but in different ways. Egg donors are valued for their youth, fertility, beauty, and accomplishments; pictures of donors prove their femininity and physical attractiveness and often attest to signal moments of accomplishment such as graduation or wedding day. It is not unusual for egg donor pictures to mimic the classic "head shots" used by models and actresses (and indeed, a significant number of egg donors list these occupations in their profiles). In a study of egg and sperm donor programs, sociologist Rene Almeling identified two gendered stereotypes that agencies expect of egg donors--donors could either present as attractive and well-educated, or as caring mothers of their own children. Agencies use "gendered coaching strategies" to ensure that donors will choose pictures and write profiles that enhance these qualities, particularly through reference to altruistic motivations (Almeling 63).

[43] Surrogates are also valued for their altruism, fertility, and physical health, but photographs of surrogates provide a different type of "evidence" than do photographs of egg donors. Pictures of surrogates in late pregnancy demonstrate their ability to successfully carry a pregnancy to term, and they represent a cultural marker of heightened (and nonsexualized) femininity. Surrogacy poses a potential threat to traditional notions of femininity by detaching pregnancy from motherhood; these images rehabilitate surrogates, emphasizing that surrogates are mothers themselves who are motivated to give the gift of life to another family. In lieu of a surrogacy database, Agency A's website offers a web album slideshow of surrogates in their program to the tune of Bach's "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring." The slideshow streams pictures of the surrogates on their wedding days, pictures of their bare and pregnant stomachs, ultrasound images of fetuses, and of the women with their children and families. Images such as these represent the completeness of the surrogate's own family as well as evidence of her fertility. This is important because surrogates are almost universally required to have biological children of their own. Such policies are based on the belief that surrogates with children are less likely to renege on their contractual agreement to relinquish the child at birth. Images of the surrogate as a good mother bolster her claims of altruism because motherhood and self-sacrifice are cast as a necessary pair. Because motherhood is seen as a sign of maturity and a marker of true womanhood in American culture, pictures of the surrogate pregnant or with her family reinforce these gendered values. Thus visual images of surrogates as good, altruistic, and self-sacrificing mothers shore up the narrative of women helping women that naturalizes the surrogacy process.

[44] In sum, agencies are less likely to "materialize" surrogates in the same way as egg donors, and when they do, it is clear that the qualities valued in surrogates are not identical to those valued in egg donors. The race and ethnicity of surrogates is not entirely inconsequential, yet the lack of detailed attention to phenotype suggests that race has a different meaning when attached to surrogates than to egg donors. While donor eggs are imbued with the qualities and proclivities of the individual woman, the influence of the surrogate is limited to the sphere of "nurture" rather than "nature."

Conclusion

[45] As this project demonstrates, race is commodified through the sale of human gametes, and in turn, racial categories are reified as discrete and biological. Racial discourse in the United States is not determined solely by scientific or academic contributions; rather, popular beliefs about racial difference are entrenched within social, economic, and political ideologies that often "speak back" to claims about the biological meaninglessness of race. Intended parents rely upon multiple metrics to conceptualize the race of an egg donor, and the possible implications for the race of their future child. In contrast, the race of a gestational surrogate is not understood to impact the ethnic identity of the fetus that she carries, suggesting that it is genetics, not gestation or environment, that is understood to transmit race. This understanding of heritability is significant not only for intended parents who must negotiate racial meanings in constructing kinship, but also for the potential reproductive laborers who participate in this nontraditional form of family-building. If intended parents imagine that their child's future is determined by DNA (either their own, or that of carefully selected donors), then the ranks of potential surrogates are open to women of all racial and class backgrounds. With proper surveillance and monitoring to eliminate vices, surrogacy need not command the (relatively) high prices that it does in the United States, and may instead be outsourced to "developing" nations such as India, Guatemala, and Argentina. This "reproductive tourism" expands the market for reproductive labor across the globe. It also introduces new questions for reproductive justice as women who struggle to support their own families become the means by which an international, globalized market of (re)production takes form.

[46] The geneticization of race in the ART industry, and the differential value placed on the race of egg donors as compared to surrogates demonstrate that racial negotiations are central to our understanding of kinship construction. The reproductive technology industry is a prime location to reveal these inconsistencies because it straddles both the market and medicine, both technology and consumption. As the overlap between medicine and the market grows, these sites will continue to serve as fertile grounds for measuring shifting ideologies of race, gender, and kinship.

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Contributor's Note

LAURA HARRISON is an Assistant Professor of Gender and Women's Studies at Minnesota State University, Mankato. She researches the ways in which reproductive technologies intersect with ideologies of race, family formation, and reproductive rights. She is currently working on a book project about the racial and reproductive politics of gestational surrogacy.