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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2020
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 (already well discussed in the press) 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.
1 The usual approach to moral questions about the practice of surrogate motherhood is simply to list the possible problems that might arise within a surrogate motherhood arrangement. For examples of this sort of approach, see Francoeur, Robert T.Utopian Motherhood: New Trends in Human Reproduction (Garden City, NY: Doubleday 1970), 102-6,Google Scholar and Council for Science and Society, Human Procreation: Ethical Aspects of the New Techniques (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1984), 66-70.
2 This is the term used by Warnock, Mary in A Question of Life: The Warnock Report on Human Fertilisation and Embryology (Oxford: Basil Blackwell 1985), 42.Google Scholar
3 Bayles, Michael D.Reproductive Ethics (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall 1984), 22.Google Scholar
4 See also Robertson, John A. ‘Surrogate Mothers: Not So Novel After AH,’ The Hastings Center Report 13 (October 1983), 29,CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Council for Science and Society, 67. There are also other forms of surrogate motherhood, for example, those in which the surrogate gestates an embryo which is not the product of her own egg, but which was produced through in vitro fertilization of another women’s ovum, or was obtained through the process of uterine lavage. These raise issues comparable to those in standard surrogate motherhood cases, but may be complicated further by the fact that the child which is produced is not genetically related to the gestating mother.
5 There are others - such as Krimmel’s, Herbert T.view that surrogate motherhood is immoral primarily because of the motivations of the persons involved and the effects on the children produced - which I shall not discuss here. See “The Case Against Surrogate Parenting,” The Hastings Center Report 13 (October 1983), 35-9. Cf. A Matter of Life, 45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
6 Robertson, 28.
7 Bayles also compares the issues surrounding surrogate motherhood to those in AID (23). Cf. Rassaby, Alan B. ‘Surrogate Motherhood: The Position and Problems of Substitutes,’ in Walters, William and Singer, Peter eds., Test-Tube Babies (Melbourne: Oxford University Press 1982), 103,Google Scholar and Patterson, Suzanne M. ‘Parenthood by Proxy: Legal Implications of Surrogate Birth,’ Iowa Law Review 385 (1982), 390-1.Google Scholar
8 Robertson, 28.
9 Cf. Rassaby, 104.
10 For example, white, not black: ‘[A]lmost every adopting white couple wants a healthy white baby, and the great majority of young, pregnant, white American women do not give up their babies for adoption’ (Gorney, Cynthia ‘For Love and Money,’ California Magazine [October 1983], 91).Google Scholar
11 Ibid., 155.
12 Munro, Margaret ‘“Rent-a-Womb” Trade Thriving Across Canada-U.S. Border,’ The Montreal Gazette (21 January 1985) D-11Google Scholar
13 Robertson, 29.
14 Bayles, 26; cf. Rassaby, 103.
15 A Matter of Life also cites this claim as a possible justification for surrogacy: ‘[CJarrying mothers Ȇ have a perfect right to enter into such agreements if they so wish, just as they have a right to use their own bodies in other ways, according to their own decision’ (45). Cf. Council for Science and Society, 66.
16 Robertson, 29.
17 Munro, D-11.
18 Robertson, 32-3.
19 Bayles, 25.
20 Rassaby, 103. Cf. Walters, William A. W. and Singer, Peter ‘Conclusions —And Costs,’ in Test-Tube Babies, 138.Google Scholar
21 Robertson, 32.
22 Ibid., 33.
23 Ibid., 34.
24 Advertisements for prospective surrogates usually make it clear that applicants should be white. And the commissioning couple may ‘try again’ for a boy if the pregnancy produces a female infant (Mary Kay Blakely, ‘Surrogate Mothers: For Whom Are They Working?’ Ms. 11 [March 1983], 18 and 20). She could also have added class considerations. Cf. Petchesky, Rosalind Pollack ‘Reproductive Freedom: Beyond “A Woman’s Right to Choose,”’ in Stimpson, Catharine R. and Person, Ethel Spector eds., Women: Sex and Sexuality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1980), 92-116,Google Scholar for a discussion of class distinctions in the availability of other reproductive services, such as abortion and contraception.
25 Susan Ince states: ‘The need to continue patriarchal lineage, to make certain the child has the sperm and name of the buyer, is primary’ (‘Inside the Surrogate Industry,’ in Arditti, RitaKlein, Renate Duelli and Minden, Shelley eds., Test-Tube Women: What Future for Motherhood? [London: Pandora Press 1984], 112).Google Scholar
26 Blakely, 20.
27 Nash, Susan E.letter, Ms. 11 (June, 1983), 5.Google Scholar
28 Some confirmation for this appears in a recent brief discussion of the motives of surrogate mothers. One woman wrote, ‘When I first heard of surrogate motherhood, my immediate thoughts were, “Goodness, I could do that! I can’t cook, I can’t play tennis or do tapestries, but I am good at being pregnant and giving birth.’” Quoted in Wood, Carl and Westmore, AnnTest-Tube Conception (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall 1984), 113.Google Scholar
29 Ince, 102.
30 Ibid., 112.
31 Letter, The Hastings Center Report 14 (June, 1984), 43Google Scholar
32 Dworkin, AndreaRight-Wing Women (New York: Perigee Books 1983), 181Google Scholar
33 Ibid., 187.
34 Ibid., 188.
35 Munro, D-11.
36 Moen, Elizabeth W. ‘What Does “Control Over Our Bodies” Really Mean?’, International Journal of Women’s Studies 2 (March/April 1979), 133Google Scholar
37 I owe these ideas to Ted Worth.
38 Ince, 107.
39 This point of view is taken most noticeably by Hirsch, Bernard D. in ‘Parenthood by Proxy,’ Journal of the American Medical Association 249 (April 22/29/1983), 2251-2.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
40 This seems to be reflected in surrogate motherhood contracts: the contract signed by the mother is often longer, and specifies more limitations, than that signed by the commissioning couple. (‘Nothing Left to Chance in “Rent-A-Womb” Agreements,’ The Toronto Star [January 13, 1985].) See also Mady, Theresa M. ‘Surrogate Mothers: The Legal Issues,’ American Journal of Law and Medicine 7 (Fall 1981), 351.Google ScholarPubMed
41 ‘One wonders Ȇ whether fair compensation for being a surrogate mother should be determined simply by market forces,’ Winslade, William J. ‘Surrogate Mothers: Private Right or Public Wrong?’, Journal of Medical Ethics 7 (1981), 154.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
42 Canadian Advisory Council on the Status of Women, Prostitution in Canada (March 1984), 84Google Scholar
43 Parker, Philip J. ‘Motivation of Surrogate Mothers: Initial Findings,’ American Journal of Psychiatry 140 (January 1983), 117Google ScholarPubMed
44 Ibid., 118.
45 Ibid.
46 Cf. the findings of Franks, Darrell D. ‘Psychiatric Evaluation of Women in a Surrogate Mother Program,’ American Journal of Psychiatry 138 (October 1981) 1378-9.Google Scholar
47 Parker, Philip J. ‘Surrogate Motherhood: The Interaction of Litigation, Legislation and Psychiatry,’ International Journal of Law and Psychiatry 5 (1982), 352.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
48 Dworkin, 182.
49 Ibid., 180; cf. Prostitution in Canada, 69, and Ince, 99.
50 Rothman, Barbara Katz ‘The Meanings of Choice in Reproductive Technology’ in Test-Tube Women, 23-33.Google Scholar Cf. McDonnell, KathleenNot An Easy Choice: A Feminist Re-Examines Abortion (Toronto: The Women’s Press 1984), 71-2,Google Scholar and Petchesky, 101, on abortion as a ‘free’ choice.
51 An unlimited advocacy of the further development of reproductive choice would seem to imply, for example, an unlimited ‘right’ to choose the sex of one’s children, through selective abortion, a ‘right’ which appears to be potentially gynecidal. See McDonnell, 79, and Petchesky, 100.
52 Robertson, John ‘John Robertson Replies’ The Hastings Center Report 14 (June 1984), 43.Google Scholar
53 Franks, 1379.
54 Code, Lorraine ‘Commentary on “Surrogate Motherhood” by Christine Overall,’ unpublished paper (February 1985), 3Google Scholar
55 Ibid., 4. The effects on the woman of giving up her child - effects which are at least hinted at by women who change their minds about surrendering the baby once it is born - must be counted as part of the exploitation and psychological costs to the mother of the practice of surrogate motherhood.
56 Cf. O’Brien, MaryThe Politics of Reproduction (Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul 1981), 58-9,Google Scholar on alienation and appropriation.
57 Parker, ‘Motivation of Surrogate Mothers: Initial Findings,’ 118.Google Scholar
58 Ibid., 38.
59 Dworkin, 182.
60 Munro, D-11.
61 It is worth noting that this loss of individuality will be exacerbated in the near future when embryo transfers become routine, and the surrogate mother contributes only her reproductive services to the production of the baby.