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An Essay on Surrogacy and Feminist Thought

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 April 2021

Joan Mahoney
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Extract

Surrogacy is not an easy issue for feminists. On one hand, it raises concerns about exploitation; one is faced with images of poor women being enlisted to produce babies for wealthy men and their wives, either because of fertility problems or because pregnancy is simply too inconvenient for those women who can afford to hire someone to do it for them. On the other hand, there is the specter of the state passing laws, once again, that tell women what they can and cannot do with their bodies. If we believe, as many of us do, that the state has no right to prohibit a woman from selling the sexual use of her body, doesn't the also have the right to sell the reproductive use? And if many of us, doctors, lawyers, law professors, have been willing to employ other women, less privileged women, to take care of our children after they are born, what is so different in moving the date back a bit and hiring them to carry our children before birth as well?

Assuming that surrogacy is not legally prohibited, does that mean that surrogacy contracts must be enforced? If we find something abhorrent in the idea of babies being taken from their mothers arms because, after all, a contract is a contract, we might argue that the contracts can be legal but unenforceable.

Type
Women's Autonomy
Information
Law, Medicine and Healthcare , Volume 16 , Issue 1-2 , Spring 1988 , pp. 81 - 88
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics 1988

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References

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