Reproductive politics have turned into a main political battleground, characterized by an increasing social and legal recognition of alternative forms of family-building, as well as the simultaneously growing attack on reproductive rights by conservative and far-right parties (Ediger et al. 2021, 15). In my research, I draw from a queer of colour critique and Reproductive Justice lens to critically examine the role of policy expertise in reproductive politics in Germany. Through applying the Bacchi’s WPR-method (2010) in my analysis, I make visible that cis-heteronormative norms of family-building are deeply embedded in the current hegemonic discourse and ‘problem representation’ of surrogacy and egg-donation in Germany. Furthermore, I show that the public debate has been shifted into a closed-off space through the implementation of an expertise committee. This removed the voices of affected working-class and racialized body workers, queer people, their communities and non-normative families from the policy process. I argue that the government’s ‘problem representation’ privileges expertise to be decisive for a regulation of egg-donation and surrogacy, instead of the knowledge of social movements or those affected. Lastly, there has been an insufficient understanding of how reproductive oppression functions along intersecting hierarchies in Germany to decide which families are socially desirable and legitimate.
