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Surrogacy Is an Ethical Minefield; Let’s Stay Out
Last week, the Indian government announced that it would ban foreigners from obtaining babies through surrogacy in India, though they will still allow Indian citizens to do so. This comes just a few years year after the country restricted surrogacy to male/female couples who had been married for at least two years. India’s legislators should be applauded for recognizing that baby production is an ethical minefield that has not received the scrutiny it deserves. Hopefully, they will soon recognize the ethical problems on the domestic front as well.
Poor Indian women and the children they gestate have been exploited by this baby-selling “industry” long enough. Women are sent away from their families during their pregnancies so that their diet and activities can be controlled. They are encouraged to bring one of their own children with them so that they will not be as lonely and can better deal with the emotionally wrenching experience of having a baby and giving the child away, something few repeat. And of course, women put their lives at risk to do this. The women are poor and they need the money, but there are ethical and unethical ways to obtain money. We all feel empathy for childless couples who want children, but we need to think about where that empathy leads. Do we believe that all adults have a “right” to a child? Don’t children have a right to know their parents if at all possible?
Unfortunately surrogacy and egg and sperm donation are something of a wild west here in the US. Laws vary from state to state but, in the states where it is legal, companies typically appeal to young women’s sense of altruism to convince them to donate eggs or become surrogates, downplaying the deeply negative factors. Women who donate eggs are pumped full of hormones that cause multiple eggs to mature at once, leading to severe medical problems, including cancer and infertility, for some. Many testify that they were not adequately informed of the risks at the outset, and received no compensation for their ongoing medical problems. Many are haunted for years by the knowledge that they will never know their own children. What seemed like a charitable act becomes an ongoing nightmare.
India has the right idea. Let’s follow their lead. Unfortunately, this shameful practice pops up around the world as quickly as another government — usually in reaction to tragic circumstances of some sort — closes it down on their soil. It is legal in some Mexican states, and stories of exploitation abound there. And then there’s the US. Last month, a young surrogate died in Idaho. The twins she was carrying for a couple from Spain died as well. We are a rich and supposedly enlightened country. Let’s follow the lead of India on this issue.
Published in Culture, Marriage, Science & Technology
Verily Magazine published an article by an egg donor, which really opened my eyes to the practice of egg donation. When I was 21, I saw an ad in the Irish Echo looking for egg donors who were of Irish decent, and a few other attributes that I qualified for. I thought about it as they were going to pay $5000 for the donation. My mom put the kabash on that real quick and I forgot about it. If I were more desperate for money I may have done it. After reading this and hearing about what one has to go through for egg donation I am really glad I didn’t
http://verilymag.com/2015/10/reproductive-health-fertility-donating-eggs
Do we?
We don’t care when the child they have raised for years is ripped away to be given back to birth parents who’ve managed to convince the court that this time they’re clean.
We don’t care when the baby that they were promised is kept by the mother, nor do we care when money they gave the mother to have a better life during the pregnancy is taken with no consequences when the mother changes her mind.
We don’t care when a private adoption costs a quarter of the average family’s yearly income.
Frankly, it seems like “we” think people like me should just be happy with their barrenness.
This seems like a better case for transparency and, perhaps, regulation than prohibition.
I think what Merina is saying, Tom, is that no matter how well treated a woman may be during her period of surrogacy, surrogacy is inherently exploitative – that no compensation on earth exists to make it non-exploitative. That some surrogacy conditions are poorer than others is merely icing on the cake.
Or, apparently, that the expense and encumbrance of adoption induces some who would otherwise adopt to opt for ART instead.
Price and Pretense in the Baby Market is a very good read.
I don’t think so–especially when you consider the baby. And do you really think there is going to be a lot of “transparency” in these kinds of transactions? It is impossible to know at the outset what it is going to involve, when the money beacons so strongly. The emotional and physical toll are far off on the horizon at that point. The cost to the baby of being produced in a baby factory for his or her whole life is not considered in the slightest. No, I think “transparency” in these kinds of transactions is a pipe dream.
Interesting concept. Regulate the exploitation of poor women to make it better, more humane.
I always trip myself up inside libertarian argument, like when it starts to defend what sort of looks like servitude – notice I said looks. My mind is open about the terrbily poor being recruited and sent away to gestate someone else’s sperm and eggs. While I don’t like it, regulating it seems to condone a sort of desperate 9 month indenture.
Conundrum of libertarianism. Freedom to exploit and be exploited? Justice?
Amy, I think these situations indicate the ethical problems of the whole enterprise. There’s a reason women do not sign adoption papers in our country till they have had the baby. It may seem harsh to adoptive parents, but it is because we respect the parent/child bond. We should respect that bond. Will individual courts make mistakes? Yes. But my son is a social worker. Believe me, they are trying as hard as they can to champion the best interests of the child in some very difficult and murky situations.
My heart goes out to you absolutely, but I do not think surrogacy is the answer to anything. Adoption, yes, and I know it is expensive. Start an adoption fund and I’ll donate. But producing a baby intending to remove that child from his or her parents is just wrong.
Merina— as my punishment for having looked into the sale of reproductive material, I receive newsletters from several sperm-and-egg facilities, with advertisements for their most exciting new donors, exhortations to stock up on “vials”, and of course, happy news from the general media about some of the issues that might arise for recipient parents.
So: Good news! Children of donor sperm don’t suffer for lack of a father! Phew! We can stand down. It’s all good.
A few highlights from the study:
“Zadeh and her team surveyed children, mothers and educators to determine how children conceived through sperm donation adjust to their environment compared to those born to traditional family units. The children featured in the study are between four years old to nine years old.”
Zadeh explained that their study found no significant disparities between parented mothers and single mothers regarding the quality of their parenting.She said they based their assessment according to the quality of interaction between the mother and the child, how much they enjoy their play together and how the mothers express warmth toward their children.
I thought you’d appreciate this.
Mate De, when I was young and stupid (hey–I’m a blonde!) I might have been swayed by emotional appeals as well. I shudder to think about it. After what I know now about bearing children, how difficult it is, and that instant, overwhelming attachment to that little creature that just emerged from you, I can think of nothing worse than handing my baby to another person with no further contact, or knowing that my children are out there in the world, complete strangers to me. Well, OK, I have occasionally mentally disowned them for short periods. But not knowing your own children–that is a truly horrifying thought.
Thanks, Kate. I do appreciate it. There’s lots of incentive to produce studies that show that everything is hunky dory. I mean you can totally tell everything from observing parents who know they are being observed. And of course, nothing changes when children become teen-agers.
If it turns out my wife and I can’t have all the biological children we want and it’s monetarily feasible, I’m sure we’d look into surrogacy.
At what point does a transaction become an exploitation? And when you use that term, is it automatically bad? Isn’t economic growth about “exploiting” the productivity inherent to people? Sometimes that takes the form of using their bodily resources. On one extreme we could think about exploiting someone to use their muscles to lift your furniture. Is surrogacy and organ donation not on the same spectrum?
I don’t think we do have the “right” to a child. A right to something is not the right to someone, and a child is a someone.
Adoption takes place (or should) when the alternative to being adopted is worse for the child, in our imperfect human judgement.
I have seen plenty of situations in which I wished I could snatch a kid out of its wretched, useless, toxic parents’ arms and hand it to someone willing to take care of it or (in one case) to give it a decent funeral at least. There are a few folks here at Ricochet who know how enraging this is to witness as a helping professional.
And I know wonderful, nurturing, childless people who, if anyone deserves a kid, they deserve a dozen. The world is deeply, excruciatingly unfair on this, as on so many fronts.
If you start an adoption fund, Amy, I’ll contribute too. And: hang in there.
Incidentally, are adoption agencies still biased against interracial adoption? I know that, here in Maine, inter-racial infants are adopted with some regularity— often enough, anyway, for the kids to turn up in my life. I hope that’s true everywhere?
At some level I really think opposition to surrogacy stems mostly from women who’ve had children thinking it monstrous to give up a child. Were they unable to have children themselves, I can’t help but think their opinion would do a 180.
Now that I’ve dropped that grenade, I should go…
It is, isn’t it? I have the same feeling, Merina. I even think that this might be one reason women have abortions—because the idea of giving a baby away is so…horrifying.
But women do give their babies up for adoption, and presumably we want more of them to endure the horrifying thought, and choose life, right?
Knowing when something is exploitation is not science, Mike. But I think we all understand that producing human life is different than lifting furniture. Let me just say that the one case where this might be ethical is when a surrogate is used with the genetic material of the two people who will raise the baby, but even then there should be a great deal of information provided to the surrogate, including the many negatives, and she should have significant legal protections. That kind of surrogacy big problems too, particularly the difficulty of bearing a child and giving the baby away, and the fact that this usually involves producing extra fertilized eggs that then become a form of frozen orphan. If no frozen embryos were produced and the surrogate were fully informed, that might be ethical. I can think of not other circumstances where it is ethical because of the needs and rights of the child. This is certainly an important issue that needs to receive a lot more attention in the U.S.
I agree surrogacy contains real risks of exploitation for the women involved, especially if they’re impoverished and overseas. However, those risks can be ameliorated and may be outweighed by the benefits to all involved. There are women who like being surrogates, who aren’t being exploited, who are very transparent about the who thing, and who can help people become parents and bring new people into the world.*
I don’t see what gives us the power to prevent them from doing that simply because other people might be exploited. It seems to mistake the potential for harm and abuse with its actual existence.
* I confess to some ethical reservations regarding surrogacy. Whether that means my reservations should trump people’s decisions is a separate matter.
I know, Kate. I really admire women who give their children up for adoption. But I couldn’t do it.
“Incidentally, are adoption agencies still biased against interracial adoption? I know that, here in Maine, inter-racial infants are adopted with some regularity— often enough, anyway, for the kids to turn up in my life. I hope that’s true everywhere?”
They are in North Carolina. It took my aunt and uncle four years to permanently adopt my cousin whom they’d had as a three day old baby because the court believed that black babies belonged with black mommas, even when the mom is a crack addict.
Frank, check out Rachel’s article about this. She covers it very well. I actually don’t think you really believe that, not if you really think it through. http://www.humanlifereview.com/perils-surrogacy/
Because there’s another person involved too–a baby–with needs and rights as well. I already indicate the one instance where this might be ethical, but since there is always a baby involved, that is the only instance I can think of. I encourage you to read Rachel’s article as well.
It’s difficult to react to this within the confines of the CoC.
Suffice to say, that’s evil.
You can “exploit” the physical qualities of a woman if what you want is sex… most of us have a few difficulties, at least, with prostitution, but perhaps you don’t. You can “exploit” the physical qualities of a strong man if you need a ditch dug (I do this often) but neither an orgasm nor a hole in the ground are the same as a child.
So while I may have issues with surrogacy when it comes to the process, I really have problems with ART in general when it comes to the product, or rather, with the idea of treating a person as a thing, a commodity that can be purchased. (“Product of Conception” anyone?)
I might differ from Merina in that I believe it is possible to set up a surrogacy arrangement that is —in a word—loving. We talked about this on another thread back in the mists of time; I offered to carry a baby for my sister and her husband back in the day. As it turned out, that wasn’t the issue, but I believe it would have been okay, since I was the kid’s aunt anyway. The relationship would be there, not untroubled or uncomplicated, but it would exist. I can imagine a close friend doing the same thing—kids can have extra and super-duper relatives; the key is the relationship.
Merina and I have biases in one direction, and you have them in the other direction, and the reasons are probably obvious. Still, when children are involved, the primum non nocere principle applies in spades. If nothing else, an ethical parent-to-be should seek out information that is likely to challenge his biases rather than confirm them—in other words, don’t rely on the “fertility clinic” newsletter!
If I ran the world, it would be easier to take children from incompetent mothers. I know that sounds harsh—but a child only gets one shot at childhood. If Mom gets her act together later, and wants to be in touch, fine, but children should have as many of their first eighteen years pass in safety and security as possible.
I have a couple more horror stories about the trouble of trying to be a foster parent through the state, and that’s why I will not do it. All that “respect for the parent-child bond” really means is that less than 20% of the kids in foster care get adopted because we as a country have decided that being raised by biological parents unfit by any standards but the courts’ is better than letting kids be raised by adoptive parents. We’re just shy of being kidnappers, apparently.
By the way—I’m glad your cousin got to be your cousin!
My husband and I were in the midst of planning to adopt a fifth (and probably black or mixed-race) child when he died. I figured that the kid would have at least one black cousin, since my brother had already adopted his son from Africa. (Sigh. Irrationally, I still miss the kid I didn’t get to adopt…maybe I’m just excessively maternal???)
Yeah, that poor product, doing all that existing he wouldn’t otherwise be able to do.
100 Likes.
Mike, we’ve been through this before. No one thinks that it is ethical to bring children into the world in any way possible. If we did, the man who wanted a child could say–hey I want a child. I’ll go rape women until I get one pregnant. We do not think this is OK. It matters how one goes about producing a child. It’s an ethical question. Sure, lots of people get or make pregnant in less than ethical ways because people are flawed and sex is fun, but that does not mean we condone deliberately doing it in unethical ways. That’s why we are having this conversation.
Hate to say it, but to hear some adopted kids talk, being raised by people not your parents is worse than never being born.
Boy, does that ever make me feel good about adoption.