Surrogacy and the construction of the maternae-foetae reeationship: The feminist dieemma examined

Res Publica

Volumn 7, Issue 1, 2001, Pages 13-37

  Munro, Vanessa E ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF READING   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

Feminism; Maternal foetal relationship; Pregnancy; Surrogacy

Indexed keywords

EID: 34248080953     PISSN: 13564765     EISSN: 15728692     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1023/A:1009691303212     Document Type: Article

References (93)

1. Across continents, teams of medical experts have developed improved methods of IVF treatment, of artificial insemination by donor and of freezing embryos.
2. J. Robertson, "Procreative Liberty, Embryos and Collaborative Reproduction", Virginia Law Review 69 (1983), 405-64.
3. See, for example, G. Corea, The Mother Machine (New York: Harper & Row, 1985) and
4. G. Corea, Man-Made Women (London: Hutchison, 1985).
5. Compare M. Radin, "Market Inalienability", Harvard Law Review 100 (1987), 1849-937.
6. particularly vociferous allegation of this has been lodged by S. Firestone, The Dialectic of Sex (London: Women's Press, 1979).
7. J. Zipper & S. Sevenhuijsen, "Surrogacy - Feminist Notions of Motherhood Reconsidered", in M. Stanworth, ed., Reproductive Technologies (Cambridge: Polity, 1989), 118-38.
8. A. Jaggar, "Feminist Ethics", in L. Becker and C. Becker, eds, Encyclopaedia of Ethics (New York: Garland Press, 1992), 361-70, p. 361.
9. Tong, "Feminist Perspectives and Gestational Motherhood - The Search for a Unified Legal Focus", in J. Callahan ed., Reproduction, Ethics and the Law - Feminist Perspectives (Bloomington & Indianapolis: University of Indiana Press, 1995), 55-79.
10. N. Lacey, Unspeakable Subjects -Feminist Essays in Legal and Social Theory (Oxford : Hart Publishing, 1998).
11. For a more detailed analysis of the defining characteristics of the liberal feminist camp, see P. Cain, "Feminism and the Limits of Equality", Georgia Law Review 24 (1990), 803-417.
12. L. Andrews, Between Strangers (New York: Harper & Row, 1989).
13. See J. Robertson, op. cit.
14. Invocation of any such 'right to procreate' remains a contentious issues, however, given that much debate continues to centre around whether any such right actually exists (see e.g. S. McLean, ed., Legal Issues in Human Reproduction (Aldershot: Dartmouth Publishing, 1990)).
15. R. West, "Jurisprudence and Gender", University of Chicago Law Review 55 (1982), 1-72.
16. W. Williams, "First Generation", University of Chicago Legal Forum (1989), 99-124.
17. L. Andrews, "Alternative Modes of Reproduction", in S. Cohen & N. Taub, eds., Reproductive Laws for the 1990s (Clifton, NJ: Humana Press, 1989), 361-4104, p. 371.
18. R. Posner, Sex and Reason (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992), 425.
19. See R. West, "Jurisprudence and Gender", op. cit., for further discussion of similar concerns.
20. E. Landes and R. Posner, "The Economies of the Baby Shortage", Journal of Legal Studies 1 (1987), 323-48.
21. D. Gelman and D. Shapiro, "Infertility - Babies by Contract", Newsweek, Nov. 4th 1985, 74.
22. E. Kane, Birth Mother (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1988)
23. and A. Overvold, Surrogate Parenting (Eondon: Pharos Press, 1988).
24. E. Anderson, Values in Ethics and Economics (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993).
25. M. Radin, Contested Commodities (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996).
26. K. Bartlett, "Feminist Legal Methods", 103 Harvard Law Review (1990), 829-88.
27. Here, I am thinking specifically of the majority of pregnant women in society who are not party to surrogacy agreements, but who nonetheless are affected by them. The nature of such effects will be detailed in a following section.
28. See Firestone, The Dialectic of Sex, op. cit.
29. C. Shalev, Birth Power (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), 11.
30. Perhaps the strongest advocate of this position has been Firestone, op. cit.
31. M. Radin, Contested Commodities, op. cit., 142.
32. See K. Bartlett, "Re-Expressing Parenthood", Yale Law Journal 98(2) (1989), 293-340
33. and C. Pateman, The Sexual Contract (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1988).
34. G. Corea, The Mother Machine, op. cit.
35. ' M. Freeman, "Is Surrogacy Exploitative?", in S. McEean, ed., Legal Issues in Human Reproduction, op. cit., 164-84, p. 174.
36. Some US profit-making surrogacy agencies refuse to enroll such women in their programmes: see G. Corea, The Mother Machine, op. cit., 279. However others, for example John Stehura (President of the Bionetics Foundation) believes that a gestational mother can never be poor enough - he has urged surrogacy agencies to move either to poverty-stricken areas in the USA, or to the third world where a gestational mother can be contracted for a tenth of the standard fee:
37. see G. Corea, ibid., 214.
38. C. Pateman, The Sexual Contract, op. cit., 216.
39. R. Fletcher, Loyalty - An Essay on the Morality of Relationships (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 87.
40. S. Faludi, Backlash - The Undeclared War Against Women (London: Vintage, 1992).
41. M. Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1986).
42. "Modern Times" Documentary Series, BBC - Wednesday 8th March 2000.
43. M. Warnock, A Question of Life -The Warnock Report on Human Fertilisation and Embryology (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1985).
44. B. Franklin, The Rights of Children (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986).
45. M. Radin, "Market Inalienability", op. cit., 1849.
46. M. Freeman, "Is Surrogacy Exploitative?", op. cit., 176. This acceptance has not been unanimous however - some of the most staunch law and economics protagonists, particularly under the tutelage of Posner, have found little of an objectionable nature in the notion of the commodification of children: see
47. R. Posner, Sex and Reason, op. cit.
48. K. Bartlett, "Feminist Legal Methods", op. cit.
49. G. Corea, The Mother Machine, op. cit., 276.
50. This terminology has been borrowed from the work of S. Mattingly, "The Maternal - Foetal Dyad", Hastings Centre Report (New York: Briarcliff Manor, Hastings Centre, 1992), 13-18.
51. F. Olsen "Unravelling Compromise", Harvard Law Review 103 (1989), 105-35
52. and A. Rich, Of Woman Born (London: Virago, 1979).
53. J. Gallagher, "The Fetus as Patient", in S. Cohen and N. Taub, eds., Reproductive Laws for the 1990s, op. cit., 185-236.
54. See S. Mattingly, "The Maternal-Foetal Dyad", op. cit.
55. Ibid.
56. Re. T (1992) 4 All ER 649 - Lord Donaldson alluded to the general principle that "the law requires that an adult patient who is mentally and physically capable of exercising choice must give consent if medical treatment on his body is to be lawful" in deciding that a Jehovah's Witness had the right to refuse life-saving medical treatment on religious grounds.
57. Re. AC (1990) US 573 A2d 1235; Re. S (1992) 4 All ER 671.
58. N. Rhoden, "The Judge in the Delivery Room", California Law Review 74 (1986), 1572-648.
59. Re. AC, op. cit., St. George's Healthcare NHS v. S (1998) 3 WER 936.
60. St. George's Healthcare NHS v S, op. cit., 953: "[W]hen human life is at stake, the pressure to provide an affirmative answer authorising unwanted medical intervention is very powerful. Nevertheless, the autonomy of each individual requires continuing protection even, perhaps particularly, when the motive for interfering with it is readily understandable, and indeed to many would appear commendable."
61. G. Annas, "Protecting the Eiberty of the Pregnant Patient", New England Journal of Medicine 316 (1987), 1213-14.
62. Re S, op. cit.
63. Re Tameside and Glossop Acute Services Trust v CH, op. cit.; Re Norfolk and Norwich Healthcare (NHS) Turst v W, op. cit.; see also Re MB (1997) 27 Family Law 542.
64. This intent in manifest, for example, in the case of Re C (1993) 15 BMLR 77, where a patient suffering from schizophrenia and detained under the Mental Health Act was held to be entitled to refuse consent to medical treatment upon his gangrenous leg on the basis that his gangrene was entirely unconnected to his mental disorder and therefore beyond the remit of the legislation.
65. Rochdale Healthcare (NHS) Trust v C (1997) 1 FCR 274.
66. St. George 's Healthcare NHS v S, op. cit.
67. B. Dolan and C. Parker, "Caesarean Section - A Treatment for Mental Disorder?", British Medical Journal 314 (1997), 1183-84.
68. "The implications of these judgements are considerable. It is possible that women in labour (and perhaps earlier) may only have the capacity to withhold consent so long as they do not." - C. Widett and M. Thomson, "Justifying Treatment and Other Stories", Feminist Legal Studies 5 (1997), 84-9.
69. [Abridged in J. Bridgeman and S. Milns, eds., Feminist Perspectives on Law - Law 's Engagement with The Female Body (London: Sweet & Maxwell, 1988), 378.]
70. D. Johnsen, "The Creation of Fetal Rights - Conflict with Women's Constitutional Rights to Liberty, Privacy and Lqual Protection", Yale Law Journal 95 (1986), 599-625;
71. J. Sawacki, "Disciplining Mothers - Feminism and the New Reproductive Technologies", in S. Jackson, ed., Women's Studies -A Reader (Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1993), 394-6.
72. See N. Rhoden, "The Judge in the Delivery Room", op. cit.
73. ReMadyun (1990) 573 A 2d 1235: discussed in S. Faludi, Backlash - The Undeclared War Against Women, op. cit., 466.
74. W. Arney, Power and the Profession of Obstetrics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982):
75. discussed in J. Bridgeman and S. Milns, eds., Feminist Perspectives on Law, op. cit., 348.
76. See S. Firestone, The Dialectic of Sex, op. cit.,
77. and R. Posner, Sex and Reason, op. cit.
78. For Example, M. Shaw, "The Potential Plaintiff- Preconception and Prenatal Torts", in Millinsky, Aubrey and Annas, eds., Genetics and the Law II (New York: Plenum, 1980), 225-32.
79. M. Shaw, "The Potential Plaintiff- Preconception and Prenatal Torts", op. cit., 228.
80. See A. Diduck, "Legislating Ideologies of Motherhood", Social and Legal Studies 2 (1993), 461-85. In this article, the point is well made that rights discourse is wholly incompatible with the pregnancy context because the attendant ascription of atomistic individualism to the bearer of foetal rights denies the experiential connection between woman and foetus.
81. J. Gallagher, "Prenatal Invasions and Interventions - What's Wrong with Fetal Rights?" Harvard Women's Law Journal 10 (1987), 9-58.
82. D v Berkshire County Council (1987) l All ER 20.
83. Gradin v Grodin (1980) 102 Mich. App. 396.
84. R. Hubbard, "Personal Courage is Not Enough - Some Hazards to Childbearing in the 1980s", in R. Arditti, R. Klein and S. Minden, eds., Test Tube Women - What Future for Motherhood? (Eondon: Pandora Press, 1984), 345-56.
85. In Rochin v California (1952) 342 US 165, it was held that forcible pumping of a criminal's stomach violated the individual's right to due process, with the court calling such conduct "conscience-shocking". Furthermore, in Winston v Lee (1985) 105 S. Crt. 1611, the court considered it unconstitutional to violate a criminal suspect's rights by surgically removing a bullet from his body for use in evidence.
86. S. Firestone, The Dialectic of Sex, op. cit., presents among the most optimistic predictions in this regard.
87. D. Johnson, "The Creation of Fetal Rights", op. cit., 599.
88. V. Kolder, J. Gallagher and M. Parsons, "Court-Ordered Obstetrical Interventions", New England Journal of Medicine 316 (1987), 1192-6.
89. G. Annas, "Protecting the Liberty of the Pregnant Patient", op. cit., 1213.
90. G. Corea, "What the King Cannot See", in E. Baruch, S. D'Adorno and J. Seager, eds., Embryos, Ethics and Women's Rights -Exploring New Reproductive Technologies (New York: Hamworth, 1987), 78-96.
91. S. Bordo, Unbearable Weight : Feminism, Western Culture and the Body (California: University of California Press, 1993), 95.
92. J. Mair, "Maternal-Foetal Conflict: Defined or Defused?", in S. McLean, ed., Contemporary Issues in Law, Medicine and Ethics, op. cit., 79-97'.
93. Perhaps most famous amongst these is M. Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Volume I (London: Penguin, 1976).