Care ethics and the global practice of commercial surrogacy

Bioethics

Volumn 24, Issue 7, 2010, Pages 333-340

  Parks, Jennifer A ^a  

^a LOYOLA UNIVERSITY CHICAGO   (United States)

Author keywords

Assisted reproductive technology; Care ethics; Commercial surrogacy; Reproductive liberalism; Reproductive tourism

Indexed keywords

ARTICLE; BIOETHICS; CHILD; CHILD CARE; COMMERCIAL PHENOMENA; DEVELOPING COUNTRY; ETHICS; FEMALE; HUMAN; INFANT; INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION; MEDICAL TOURISM; MOTHER; PREGNANCY;

BIOETHICAL ISSUES; CHILD; CHILD CARE; COMMERCE; DEVELOPING COUNTRIES; FEMALE; HUMANS; INFANT; INTERNATIONALITY; MEDICAL TOURISM; PREGNANCY; SURROGATE MOTHERS;

EID: 77956005050     PISSN: 02699702     EISSN: 14678519     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-8519.2010.01831.x     Document Type: Article

References (39)

1. A. Hochschild. 2009. Childbirth at the Global Crossroads. The American Prospect. Available at http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=childbirth_at_the_global_crossroads [Accessed 27 Oct 2009].
2. P. Sehgal. 2008. Reproductive Tourism Soars in India: Adoption and Surrogacy Laws Have Yet to Catch Up. The WIP. Available at http://www.thewip.net/contributors/2008/10/reproductive_tourism_soars_in.html [Accessed 12 Sept 2009].
3. Sehgal, op. cit., note 2.
4. For a convincing argument concerning the need for national and international legal frameworks.
5. E. Blythe, A. Farrand. Reproductive Tourism - a Price Worth Paying for Reproductive Autonomy? Critical Social Policy Ltd 2005; 25: 91-114. Currently, international surrogacy is inconsistently and unevenly legislated. Surrogacy is banned in China and much of Europe. It is legal but regulated in New Zealand and Great Britain. Only 17 of the United States have laws on the books; it is legal in Florida and banned in New York.
6. Hochschild, op. cit. note 1.
7. Liberal arguments regarding commercial surrogacy in a global context differ little from longstanding liberal defenses of the practice within the United States.
8. R.J. Arneson. Commodification and Commercial Surrogacy. Philos Public Aff 1992; 21: 132-164
9. H. Malm. Paid Surrogacy: Arguments and Responses. Public Aff Q 1989; 3: 57-66
10. L. Andrews. 1990. Surrogate Motherhood: The Challenge for Feminists. In Surrogate Motherhood: Politics and Privacy. L. Gostin, ed. Bloomington: Indiana University Press: 167-182
11. J. Robertson. 1994. Children of Choice: Freedom and the New Reproductive Technologies. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
12. Some examples of feminist critics include J.Raymond. 1994. Women as Wombs: Reproductive Technologies and the Battle Over Women's Freedom. Melbourne, Australia: Spinifex Press
13. G. Corea. 1986. The Mother Machine: Reproductive Technologies From Artificial Insemination to Artificial Wombs. New York, NY: HarperTrade;
14. C. Overall. 1993. The Case Against the Legalization of Contract Motherhood. In Human Reproduction: Principles, Practices, Policies. C. Overall, ed. Toronto: Oxford University Press: 119-137.
15. An example of religious conservative approaches includes Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. 2008. Dignitas Personae: On Certain Bioethical Questions. L'Osservatore Romano 11 May: 1.
16. This is a particularly suitable term, since citizenship rights are still negotiated within highly patriarchal cultures and since, in many cases of commercial surrogacy, the commissioning male is the biological father, with custody rights over the offspring. The commissioning female is often of no genetic relation to the resulting child, and must adopt the child in order to establish her parental rights.
17. J. Tronto. 1993. Moral Boundaries: A Political Argument for an Ethic of Care. New York: Routledge.
18. H.L. Nelson. 2001. Damaged Identities, Narrative Repair. Ithaca: Cornell University Press
19. M. Walker. 2007. Moral Understandings: A Feminist Study in Ethics. New York: Oxford University Press.
20. E. Kittay. 1999. Love's Labor: Essays on Women, Equality, and Dependency. New York: Routledge.
21. For an excellent example of this narrative view.
22. H. Lindemann. What Child is This? Hastings Cent Rep 2002; 32: 29-38.
23. Kittay, op. cit. note 9, pp. 24-5.
24. This assertion reminds one of what is objectionable about state-run orphanages: the children they house are, in some respects, 'nobodies' because there is no one to whom these children belong. None of them has the experience of being 'some mother's child,' and these children often end up psychically damaged as a result.
25. J. Callahan & D. Roberts. A Feminist Social Justice Approach to Reproduction-Assisting Technologies: A Case Study on the Limits of Liberal Theory. KY Law J 1996; 84: 1202.
26. J. Tronto. 2002. The Value of Care. Boston Review. Available at http://bostonreview.net/BR27.1/tronto.html [Accessed 12 Oct 2009].
27. Whether one is offering payment for rental of a woman's womb or whether one is buying a baby is a controversial question that cannot be addressed in this essay.
28. S. Millns. Reproducing Inequalities: Assisted Conception an the Challenge of Legal Pluralism. J Soc Welf Fam Law 2002; 24: 19-36.
29. In no way should this claim be seen to threaten a woman's right to abortion. In cases of abortion, the pregnant woman's intentions with regard to her pregnancy, and her view of that possible relationship with her fetus, is not determined. By contrast, the commissioning couple that set up the commercial surrogacy arrangement is asserting their intention to bring a child into the world and to raise it.
30. To appreciate the truth of this claim, one need only consider the way in which wanted pregnancies are treated by parents-to-be. The story of a child's birth, and the mother's experience of carrying that child, become part of that family's history before the child takes its first breath in the world. Like many other parents who anticipate the coming of their newest family members, I framed and kept on my dresser an ultrasound photo of my son, along with the other family photos. These practices are examples of how the parental relationship is set into motion long before the point of birth.
31. Blythe & Farrand, op. cit. note 4, p. 108.
32. The same consideration should be given to the potential offspring a couple may produce naturally, since whether children are born of assisted reproductive technology or by natural means, the implications of their coming into the world should be seriously contemplated by those who are party to the potential offspring's existence.
33. I.M. Young. 2007. Global Challenges: War, Self-Determination and Responsibility for Justice. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press: 175.
34. Young, op. cit., note 21, pp. 175-176.
35. C. Beitz. 1979. Political Theory and International Relations. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Beitz argues that an international society exists, even though as of yet we have no comprehensive constitution to regulate it.
36. Gestating a child for another couple is stigmatized in Indian culture because of its perceived connection to sex work, and the intimations of marital infidelity on the part of the paid Indian surrogates.
37. A. Pande. Not an 'Angel', Not a 'Whore': Commercial Surrogacy as 'Dirty' Workers in India. Indian Journal of Gender Studies 2009; 16: 141-173.
38. The approach of extending to surrogates the right to terminate contact with the commissioning couple and the resulting child may itself sound like a liberal response to this relational question. However, the reasons for such termination would, I argue, be relational ones, not rooted in liberal individualism. To date, interviews with Indian surrogates suggest that some would welcome and embrace a relationship with the children they gestate, while others fear such a relationship because of the harm it could do to their extended family relationships and to their social standing. These concerns stem from relational considerations, not from concerns for individual rights and freedoms. But despite my concern to protect surrogates, I think that they, too, have a moral responsibility to consider the implications of their actions for the offspring they help to create. No one should have a sense of total moral or legal impunity when entering an agreement to bring a child into the world.
39. Hochschild, op. cit. note 1.