Ethical and Legal Dilemmas of Surrogacy
Christie Blackwell
HCA 322
Dr. Nine Bell
June 17, 2013
Ethical and Legal Dilemmas of Surrogacy Many individuals have a life plan consisting of college, marriage, and then children. After numerous methods of conception, many couples are still unable to conceive a child. A woman who enters into a contract with a couple, agreeing to carry and birth a child, then hand that child over to the contracted couple, who is often unable to conceive own their own naturally is considered surrogacy (Pozgar, 2012). Surrogacy raises many ethical and legal issues for all parties involved. Is it moral or immoral to enter into an agreement with a woman to birth a child for money? What are the
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On the flipside on the issue, can it not also be viewed that allowing these women to do as they see fit with their bodies as economic empowerment? The money provided to these women can used for various financial means outside of taking care of medical heath care for themselves and the child. The amount provided to each female varies depending on what she and the couple feel is sufficient, therefore any extra monetary compensation can used to help the women relieve themselves from other debts. Autonomy does provide the right that women get to choose their reproductive rights and that includes bearing children for those who cannot do so or for monetary stability. Suggesting that surrogacy dehumanizes her is another form of paternalism. Paternalism limits one’s autonomy for their own good (Pozgar, 2012). Some view altruistic surrogacy as a form of exploiting the surrogate. There is no monetary compensation to woman placing her health and well-being on the line for another’s benefit. However, it can also be held that the woman knowingly entered into the agreement with full disclosure of the risks and benefits to her health and body. Again, autonomy and justice are extremely prevalent ethical principles to explore when discussing the topic of surrogacy. Same-sex marriage has become a hot topic in the United States in the last few years. The idea of raising a family by homosexual
Commercial surrogacy is the process in which a woman is paid a fee to carry and deliver a baby to term. Once the baby is delivered, the woman relinquishes all parental rights to the commissioning couple who exclusively raise the child as their own. Altruistic surrogacy, by contrast, is an arrangement where the surrogate receives reimbursement but only for the expenses that she may have incurred during the pregnancy. In this essay I will argue that commercial surrogacy should not be market-inalienable. I will start by outlining Elizabeth Anderson’s argument in “Is Women’s Labor a Commodity?” in which she offers a number of criticisms to commercial surrogacy. I will then outline objections to the argument and highlight how her argument is highly speculative and does not provide an adequate basis for the prohibition of commercial surrogacy.
I read an article that was published on The Hasting Center Journal, called “The Case Against Surrogate Parenting”, by Herbert Krimmel, Krimmel takes a stand against surrogate motherhood arrangements because of the many ethical issues it causes, he argues surrogate motherhood, is a financial profit, there can be conflicts during the process, and is designed to separate in the mind of the surrogate mother. First, Krimmel argues that the reason a woman often or always undertakes the pregnancy is because of the money motive. He states, “The cause of this dissociation is some other benefit she will receive, most often money.' In other words, her desire to create a child is born of some motive other than the desire to be a parent. This separation
Baby Business by Insight on SBS had a discussion about surrogacy in relation to a couple that had a baby though surrogacy. In the show it was said that most surrogate mothers have genetically babies, which the mother gives her egg and the father gives his sperm and the doctor inseminates it in the surrogate mother. Most of the everyday people have to the term “renting a womb” towards surrogacy whereas the Women Health Resources
Purdy defends surrogate mothering from a consequentialist point of view. Her case is founded on two premises: firstly, that surrogacy is favourable (that is, it brings about pleasure and reduces pain), and secondly, that the practice is only non-traditional and not morally reprehensible. She thus concludes that "appealing to the sacrosanctity of traditional marriage or of blood ties to prohibit otherwise acceptable practices that would satisfy people 's desires hardly makes sense", and thus, surrogacy should be permissible (Purdy, 1999).
We are living in a new era where technology can help women have babies in unconventional ways. Having children is a personal choice. In some people’s view, government should not be regulating when people should and should not start having a family. The ethical issue is when the parents start applying for governmental benefits after the baby is conceived via In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) and born posthumously. When practicing IVF, are we violating God’s will? This paper is to discuss the views of the four candidates interviewed in relation to posthumous conception and delivery, their views on benefits/inheritance entitlement to these babies, and ethical principles and theories in
Adopting a child can help save someone in need. Most kids in foster homes were either abandoned or brought to this world by parents who weren’t financially stable yet. Although many complications can also occur with surrogates, in Vancouver a woman who agreed on having a baby to an infertile friend is suing the clinic because she claims that one of her donated eggs was used to implant and help impregnate her friend without her consent (Rankin, 2017). In, “Another Woman gave birth to my child’: surrogate sues fertility clinic” explains how surrogates cannot be paid for their services. The woman whose name isn’t described gave up her rights but feels as the clinic did her wrong. She explains how betrayed to have to mentally go through a situation where someone can be betrayed for using someone’s eggs without consent. IVF can be used for multiple pregnancies and as long as doctors have approval can do whatever they want. In the woman’s case, she did not give any consent, therefore, made the process of the IVF to go even further into the court where she wants to file charges against the court. If the process was to be done without any consent this would have been a situation of Malpractice where the surgeons feel its right to go on with the procedure without the woman’s full
Elizabeth Stern, who had sclerosis, believed she would not be able to carry a child. The agreement was that Whitehead would be “inseminated with Mr. Stern’s sperm, carry the pregnancy to term and then yield parental rights to the Sterns (Garg 2016). A legality issue arose when Whitehead decided that she wanted to keep the little girl, known as Baby M. The result of the two-year long court case was that the Sterns had full parental rights of Baby M. While gestational surrogacy is more widely used in 2017, this case raised some concerns around the surrogacy process. First, the exchange of money for a reproductive service. Unlike other forms of reproductive services such a sex work, there is not a point within the nine months of being pregnant that one can just up and quit. Even at a certain point, getting a legal abortion is not even allowed. Second, the fact that Whitehead’s decision about having custody of a child she gave birth to was undermined by a contract. Last, the decision of how much a woman’s body is worth, especially reproductive organs. Rather than these three concerns being resolved with the use of a new type of surrogacy, gestational surrogacy seems to be more
In her article on surrogate pregnancy, Bonnie Steinbock takes the stance that surrogate pregnancy not be illegal but that someone needs to set rules and regulate it in a way that is more beneficial than potentially harmful. She believes that well-regulated surrogacy should be the outcome of the rare cases that have occurred in surrogacy, such as the Baby M Case. Steinbock is against restricting individual’s freedom, decisions, and actions, as well as acting paternalistically. She reasons that surrogacy does not result in exploitation, loss of human dignity, or harm to others; therefore, it need not be prohibited.
One of the most popular commercial places that surrogacy’s take place is in India where it is legalized and much cheaper than in the United States (Gentleman, p.1). In India women sign surrogacy contracts that legally bind them to be implanted with another woman’s egg, grow the baby, give birth to the child, and then hand over the baby and all her rights to the biological parents (Sandel, p.91). Even with surrogacy being legal, there is much debate about the ethical ramifications it brings to society. All three sources believe that surrogacy acts as “wombs for rent” for the wealthy families of the western hemisphere (Warner, p.2, Gentleman, p.2). Sandel argues the ethicality of the free market may not always be as free as they seem, arguing that there are certain goods that are degraded when bought and sold (Sandel, p.75). In India women are being exploited by the surrogacy contracts having their reproductive systems put on the market. In Justice, Sandel claims that it is unethical in his two objections- tainted consent and degradation of higher goods.
Reproductive technologies have a lot to do with the theology of the family. One aspect of reproductive technology deals with the issue of pregnancy for profit. This concept is known as surrogacy, and it is used for procreation. Ten to fifteen percent of married couples are unable to have children of their own.1 A surrogate mother is a woman who carries the child, usually for an infertile couple. Surrogacy has been around for a long time; it dates back to biblical times. The concept of surrogacy is old, yet it remains one of the most socially controversial solutions to infertility.
Surrogacy is defined as the method or agreement whereby a woman agrees to carry a pregnancy for another person or persons, who will become the newborn child's parent(s) after birth. The controversies that surround this are mainly directed at 2 main points : Whether surrogacy in ethical or commercial.
Surrogacy is a controversial issue nowadays. Surrogacy allows a woman to give the gift of parenthood to a couple who would otherwise not have been able to experience it, either due to infertility or inability to adopt a child. In some cases, the surrogate can obtain monetary compensation for her services. According to Anderson (1990), A commercial surrogate mother is someone who is paid money to bear a child for other people and to terminate her parental rights, to lead to a situation that the others may raise the child as exclusively their own.
Surrogacy has not only benefited many couples hoping to have children, but surrogate mothers wishing to give the gift of life to a child as well. Surrogacy however has also raised ethical questions in determining who claims the right as the legal parent of a child, sometimes creating problems that can be difficult to resolve. Surrogacy should therefore be
A Surrogate mother is a woman who becomes pregnant, carries and delivers a child for another couple in other words “Commissioners parents.” Surrogacy can be complete or partial. In the case of complete, egg and sperm available to authorized parents or donors. For the full surrogacy IVF is used. It is preferably in the partial. Thus, it is the problem that is one so much medical as ethical and legal. And here can be a lot the views, I will present my own. 47% of couples are childless; more than a third of them cannot have children because of infertility. In different cases, the situation may be different if a woman cannot get pregnant, but are able to bear a child that is used In Vitro Fertilization (IVF). Male infertility is also treated. Cases, in which the only solution is the
The Surrogacy is subjected to a lot of controversy. It is due to various social, legal and ethical problems associated with it. Concept of ‘motherhood