:This article reexamines the “prostitution objection” to paid surrogacy, and argues that rebuttals to this objection fail to focus on surrogates as embodied persons. This failure is based on the false distinction between “selling one’s reproductive services” and “selling one’s body.” To ground the analysis of humans as embodied persons, this article uses Kant’s late ethical theory, which develops the conceptual framework for understanding human beings as embodied selves. Literature on surrogacy commonly emphasizes that all Kantian duties heed to the (...) categorical prohibition to treat persons as mere means. What this literature leaves out is that this imperative commands us more specifically to engage ourselves and others as embodied persons. This article aims to relate this point to a specific issue in assisted reproduction. It argues that a Kantian account of human beings as embodied persons prohibits paid surrogacy on exactly the same grounds as it prohibits prostitution. (shrink)

I defend the permissibility of paid surrogacy arrangements against the arguments Sara Ketchum advances in " Selling Babies and Selling Bodies." I argue that the arrangements cannot be prohibited out of hand on the grounds that they treat persons as objects of sale, because it is possible to view the payments made in these arrangements as compensation for the woman ' s services. I also argue that the arguments based on exploitation and parental custodial rights fail to provide adequate grounds (...) for prohibiting the arrangements. (shrink)

Because it is often argued that surrogacy should not be treated as contractual, the question arises in which terms this practice might then be couched. In this article, I argue that a phenomenology of surrogacy centering on the notion of trust provides a description that is illuminating from the moral point of view. My thesis is that surrogacy establishes a complex and extended reproductive unit––the “surrogacy triad” consisting of the surrogate mother, the child, and the intending parents––whose constituents are bound (...) together by mutual trustful commitments. Even though a trust-based approach does not provide an ultimate answer to whether surrogacy should be sanctioned or prohibited, it allows for at least some practical suggestions. In particular, I will argue that, under certain conditions, surrogacy is tenable within familial or other significant relationships, and I will stress the necessity of acknowledging the new relationships and moral commitments that result from this practice. (shrink)

There is something about the debate over reproductive technologies of all kinds—from coerced use of Norplant to trait-selection technologies, to issues surrounding in vitro fertilization, to fetal tissue transplantation—that seems to invite dubious analogies. A Tennessee trial court termed Mary Sue and Junior Davis's frozen embryos “in vitro children” and applied a best-interests standard in awarding “custody” to Mary Sue Davis; the Warnock Committee drew an implicit analogy between human gametes and transplantable organs in its recommendation of a voluntary, nonprofit (...) system for collecting and distributing gametes in the United Kingdom; Owen Jones compares the right to trait-selection to the right to abortion; Robert Veatch once claimed that if a woman had signed an organ donation card and then died while pregnant, she had in effect given consent to the attempt to sustain the pregnancy after her death; John Robertson has argued that contract pregnancy poses no problems we have not already encountered with adoption; and Andrea Bonnicksen has compared the wonders of preembryonic genetic screening to the riches housed in the gold museum in Bogota, Colombia. (shrink)

This paper will explore some moral and conceptual aspects of the practice of surrogate motherhood. Although I put forward a number of criticisms of existing ideas about this subject, I do not claim to offer a fully developed position. Instead what I have tried to do is to call into question what seem to be some generally accepted assumptions about surrogate motherhood, and to lend plausibility to my view that surrogate motherhood may be morally troubling for reasons not always fully (...) recognized by other writers on this issue. These reasons go beyond the fairly obvious consequentialist concerns about its effects on the persons - particularly the child — involved. A concern for the well being of a child produced by a surrogate is, I believe, entirely justified, but my focus in this paper will be upon the surrogate mother herself. (shrink)

There is something about the debate over reproductive technologies of all kinds—from coerced use of Norplant to trait-selection technologies, to issues surrounding in vitro fertilization, to fetal tissue transplantation—that seems to invite dubious analogies. A Tennessee trial court termed Mary Sue and Junior Davis's frozen embryos “in vitro children” and applied a best-interests standard in awarding “custody” to Mary Sue Davis; the Warnock Committee drew an implicit analogy between human gametes and transplantable organs in its recommendation of a voluntary, nonprofit (...) system for collecting and distributing gametes in the United Kingdom; Owen Jones compares the right to trait-selection to the right to abortion; Robert Veatch once claimed that if a woman had signed an organ donation card and then died while pregnant, she had in effect given consent to the attempt to sustain the pregnancy after her death; John Robertson has argued that contract pregnancy poses no problems we have not already encountered with adoption; and Andrea Bonnicksen has compared the wonders of preembryonic genetic screening to the riches housed in the gold museum in Bogota, Colombia. (shrink)

The gestational surrogate – and her economic and educational vulnerability in particular – is the focus of many of the most persistent worries about paid surrogacy. Those who employ her, and those who broker and organize her services, usually have an advantage over her in resources and information. That asymmetry exposes her to the possibility of exploitation and abuse. Accordingly, some argue for banning paid surrogacy. Others defend legal permission on grounds of surrogate autonomy, but often retain concerns about the (...) surrogate. In response to the dilemma of a ban versus bald permission, we propose a 'soft law' approach: states should require several hours of education of surrogates – education aimed at informing and enhancing surrogate autonomy. (shrink)

An objection often is raised against the use of reproductive technology to create "nontraditional families," as in ovum donation for postmenopausal women or postmortem artificial insemination. The objection states that conceiving children in such circumstances is harmful to them because of adverse features of these nontraditional families. A similar objection is raised when parents, through negligence or willful disregard of risks, create children with serious genetic diseases or other developmental handicaps. It is claimed that such reproduction harms the children who (...) are created. In reply to this Harm to the Child Argument, it has been pointed out that the procreative acts that supposedly harm the child are the very acts that create the child. This reply has been developed into an argument that, in most of the types of cases under consideration, creating the child does not harm her. This reply, the No Harm Argument, has been stated in three main ways, and it is one of the most misunderstood arguments in bioethics. This paper examines the main rebuttals that have been made to the No Harm Argument and argues that none of them is successful. (shrink)

Surrogacy is one of the desired reproductive technologies for family formation, yet surrogate mothers are subjected to unethical treatments and unbalanced power relations in India. Such treatment obscures women’s free decision-making and can be detrimental to their maternal self. Recently, the Surrogacy Act, 2021, has received the President’s approval to regulate surrogacy practices by limiting them for the altruistic motives which have again provoked the burning debates regarding reproductive technologies, women’s emancipation and procreative labour. The paper thus explores women’s agency, (...) maternal freedom and surrogate arrangements in Indian society. The complexity of the implementation of the law, vulnerability of surrogate labour, woman’s bodily autonomy and reproductive choices have been analysed. This has been done through comprehensive feminist discussions on motherhood experience in terms of enforced vs. voluntary to find the way to protect women’s freedom and subjectivity in the task of ‘mothering as empowerment’. (shrink)

Surrogacy and adoption are both family-making measures subject to extensive domestic and international regulation. In this nationally representative survey study (N = 1552), we explore public attitudes to various forms of surrogacy and adoption in the United Kingdom, in response to an early proposal to allow “double donor” surrogacy as part of the ongoing legal reform project. We sought to both gauge public moral support for adoption and surrogacy generally, the effect that prospective parents’ fertility had on this support, and (...) the extent to which the public would find equivalencies between “double donor” surrogacy (DDS) and planned private adoption (PPA) to be morally significant. Our findings indicate that whilst there is broad baseline support for all forms of adoption and surrogacy, this support increases significantly when one or both prospective parents are infertile. These findings also suggest that the language in which a family-making arrangement is characterized has a greater influence on moral support for the arrangement than practical features such as the biological relationship (or absence thereof) between one/both parents and the child. (shrink)

This paper will explore some moral and conceptual aspects of the practice of surrogate motherhood. Although I put forward a number of criticisms of existing ideas about this subject, I do not claim to offer a fully developed position. Instead what I have tried to do is to call into question what seem to be some generally accepted assumptions about surrogate motherhood, and to lend plausibility to my view that surrogate motherhood may be morally troubling for reasons not always fully (...) recognized by other writers on this issue. These reasons go beyond the fairly obvious consequentialist concerns about its effects on the persons - particularly the child — involved. A concern for the well being of a child produced by a surrogate is, I believe, entirely justified, but my focus in this paper will be upon the surrogate mother herself. (shrink)

In the surrogate mother procreation can be divorced both from sex as well as any anticipation of child rearing. Often the risks of surrogate motherhood are presented in terms of alternative family structures and economic exploitation of women. Such possibilities must invite critical reflection in order for there to be legal reform. Of paramount importance is the child's best interest and until the full psychological is the child's best interest and until the full psychological ramifications for the child, adoptive parents (...) and natural mother are determined then the law's role must be ambivalent. In this impasse the minority view of the Warnock Report has much to commend itself. (shrink)