Individual or Private Issues
For most surrogate motherhood contracts, the contracted woman is expected to give up the child that she has borne over approximately nine months to another couple, willingly, and if not, on legal contractual means. She is not to foster a relationship with the child after birth, so that the child will only know its nurturing parents and shall not be confused. The problem with this arguement is that a mother naturally bonds to her child during pregnancy, and that giving him up is often hard to do. If a surrogate does fight back, as only a mother would, she is seen as evil and cannot tell the truth (see the Baby M case in Pence). However, in many adopted children and the women who put them up for adoption now neglect the adoption papers and laws, and search out their true roots. Also, many children live in blended families, and change homes between their remarried parents often. What reason can be given that would stop a surrogate from reaching out to a child that she bore, and may be the genetic mother of?
The other problem dealing with the surrogate's contracted detachment to her child is of her reasoning to continue the pregnancy. Many contracts stipulate that she exercise, refrain from drugs, alcohol, and smoking, eat a healthy, balanced diet, and provides for prenatal care, in order to further the development of a healthy baby. What motivation is there for a woman to go through a pregnancy, and these stipulations and rules, if she isn't to care for the child that she is carrying? She needs a reason to help the baby be born healthy, and non-addicted to drugs. Many believe that it is the monetary reinbursement that she receives that is the driving force. Most women argue that the money isn't the reason (at least the whole one). Many surrogates and other women believe that the reason is because these women see the gift of a child/aid to help couples become parents as the greatest deed that they can do for another.
In today's culture a couple is expected, after a time of being together, to have children. Something is considered "wrong" with a couple if they don't have children of their own. There was originally a formal basis for having genetic children. Besides their usefulness in the fields, or their worth as a commodity to be sold into labor, they were expected to carry on the family line. (Agriculture is fast losing its place in today's society. Also, child indentureship is banned in the modern West.) A child today is expected to carry on the family name. Parents also want an heir to their possessions, as well as to the family business.
If a couple cannot conceive on their own, and want a baby, they now have modern technologies to allow them to have children. They can hire a surrogate mother to gestate a child for them, and perhaps furnish the egg besides. Other cases of surrogacy include the brother or sister (or other relevant relatives) providing the gametes and/or a female relative bearing the child. The want for a child, specifically a genetically-related child, is the driving force.
As pointed out in Christian Research Journal, surrogacy has been an accepted practice to circumvent female infertility, since the times in the Ancient Near East. In the Old Testament, Gen. 16:1-6; 30:1-13, two cases of women seeking heirs gave their maidservants to their husbands. (A case like this couldn't exist in today's culture, where it would be seen as adultury (neglecting the fact that maidservants aren't permitted by law.)) Surrogacy is by no means a new practice, only today it is aided by technology, and lawyers and contracts take the place of servitude and one's word.
A couple which wanted children, but were unable to have children, in the past only had two options.
Adoption may not always be the answer to gaining a child. There is generally a screening process prospective parents must pass through in order to obtain a child, as well as the adoption fee and legal proceedings to claim the child as their own. Another problem with adoption is that there just aren't enough children to go around for all the childless couples. (The advent of preventative birth control, contraceptives, and sexual education has helped prevent unwanted pregancies, which, in the past, led to many children being given up for adoption. Also, the culture's newfound acceptance of a woman bearing and rearing a child out of wedlock/on her own has led to fewer babies in orphanages.) To adopt a baby in the West is close to impossible, with a minimum of a three-year wait in the United States, being is such high demand. Meanwhile, older children, children of color, or children with disabilities are more available, but are not in such high demand. Today, to obtain a baby, couples will even go to second- or third-world countries' orphanages to avoid the wait (and "rescue" them from often poor conditions). (The exploitation of the poorer countries' orphanages to claim babies for first-world childless couples brings up additional issues, which I won't get into here.) The main idea shown by the adoption issue is that a couple wants a BABY, which is difficult to come by. If a couple can acquire a baby with a genetic link to them, all the better, especially if it is possible for the couple to do so.
If the embryo is implanted in the surrogate using in vitro fertilization, instead of artificial insemination being used, the child is put at a statistically higher risk of birth defects.
Once the child is born, the nuturing parents face quite a dilemma--how to tell this child about how it was created/born. Even for parents of the "normal" method of conceiving/bearing/nurturing a child, the issue of parental sex and the birth of a child is difficult/embarrassing to say. Adoptive parents are placed in an even more difficult position. The amount of technological knowledge as well as the confusing (even for an adult) idea of multiple parents far surpasses these two cases. Perhaps more difficult to explain to a child (and even unfair to hold against him) is the fact that his nurturing parents paid for the ability to raise him. Another problem to think about is the case of the parents who are unable to conceive because of their age, and so go about gaining a child through surrogacy. The child then must spend much of their life dealing with his parent's increasing age, mentality, and medical needs. Ishmael underwent the problems stated, as it is said that his father Abram was eighty-six when he was born. (Genesis 16:16) (I myself speak from personal experience dealing with older parents. (My father is 56 years older than I am.) It can be rough at times, especially when dealing with doctors. However, I did not also have to deal with the surrogacy issue within my family.)
Along the same lines, what about the family of the woman who is/was the surrogate mother? First, they must bear with her and aid her through what may be a difficult pregnancy. Then, they must serve as the shoulder to cry on, once she starts going through emotional withdrawal after giving up her child following birth.
Often, surrogates are screened before being chosen for the surrogacy program. Women are chosen for their psychological stability, sense of social responsibility, and their physical well-being. Many surrogates already have children. (The health and stability of her children, especially if raised by her, are used as guidelines to see how fertile and reproductively fit she is.) The ethical problem deals with these other children of the surrogate. They see that their mother is going to have another brother or sister for them. Then they see their mother go to the hospital, and return without their other sibling. How are these children made to understand the process of birth and surrogacy that their mother is going through, and the loss of (perhaps) a half-sibling? The surrogate must see past the initial financial gain, and see what stress she may be placing on her own family, for the sake of another.
To further complicate things, there is the case of altruistic surrogacy. In these cases, family members often provide the gametes, and even the uterus to gestate the child within. Once the child is born, who is to have a say in the upbringing of the child? Many family tensions and arguements are likely to occur, over the well-being of the child. Also, this child must try to figure out exact family ties, which can be trying experience, as well as to sift throught the family rifts caused by altruistic surrogacy.
Public or Social Issues
In today's society, more and more items and services are being treated as commodities, and are being bought and sold. So, now, is the service of providing children to other couples. Just as one would walk into a store, chose an item, buy it (and the store's handling services), and leave with some form of legal receipt of purchase (which can be used in legal proceedings if the item were to be taken from you), a couple wishing to have a child can walk into a clinic, chose a surrogate mother, buy the child she produces from her (and pay the clinic/agency for overseeing the deal), and leave with a contract stipulating that the child is theirs legally.
(The process may also seem like the couple is buying the surrogate mother's gestational services, and that of the clinic who oversees the process. This process can be likened to that of an employer might go to a Temporary Agency to pay for the temporary secretarial services of a temp. The service idea has also commonly been seen as analogous to prostitution. In this case, the couple purchases or rents the use of a woman or one of her body parts for a period of time. The woman performs what she is told to do, and leaves the transaction when finished with. Here, the clinic/agency is analogous to the pimp, receiving his cut of the woman's purchase price.
For the great majority of surrogate mother cases, a couple will contract through an agency/clinic for a surrogate mother. The couple generally have been unable to have children on their own, usually out of medical reasons. The surrogate will undergo artificial insemination by the husband, and carry his child to term, where she will then relinquish control of the baby to the father. (Here, the surrogate mother provides the egg, and so is therefore the biological and gestational mother of the child. In some cases, the egg will be donated, perhaps by the wife, and the surrogate will gestate the embryo following in vitro fertilization, to be given up to the couple who contracted her.)
Problems with commercialism are as follows:
Altruistic surrogacy falls under a slightly different category than the commercialism, hence it wasn't covered in this section. In this case, family members are the ones involved, or else payment (other than that of doctor/medical bills) isn't rendered.
Commercial surrogacy is often seen as baby-selling, with the clinics/agencies trading in human flesh and allowing babies to be sold. Constitutional problems arise in the U.S. surrounding this issue. Following from Amendment 13, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution, passed in 1865:
Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.the sale of humans is illegal and against their basic human rights. Fundamentally, the sale of another human being has also been seen as wrong, so why does it continue?
Today, most surrogacy cases are held together by a contract of some form. The legality of these contracts is often put under dispute. Following from the New Jersey Supreme Court's ruling on the Baby M case, such contracts ignore the child, and guarantees separation from the mother. The Paradox of Harm constitutes baby-selling. The rights of the father are placed above that of the mother's rights, and therefore constitutes a breech of "public policy" (see Pence, p.130).
The commercial surrogate mother is often paid for their services (or for the baby, depending upon how one looks at the situation of surrogacy). The monetary gain is often used as a reason to become and follow through on a surrogate pregnancy. The median fee paid to surrogates by the couple wanting a child is $10,000, or approximately $1.33 per hour calculated over the duration of the pregnancy (O'Neill, p.193). The monetary gain, when calculated per hour, seems to be an extremely low wage to pay to someone who is carrying a child for you. As Rae states in the Christian Research Journal:
The combination of desperate infertile couples, low income surrogates, and surrogacy brokers with varying degrees of moral scruples raises the prospect that the entire commercial enterprise can be exploitative.With the average income of a surrogate being around $25,000 per annum, the possibility of a large sum of $10,000 seems very tempting.
One can even forsee the day when "surrogacy brokers" become legal and mainstream. It is very likely that poorer women, and perhaps women from third-world countries, can be inticed into surrogate homes, similiar to that of a brothel. The rights of the mother, as well as her egg and/or uterus, can also be bought and traded, much like the degradation of women that is prostitution.
Family Fertility Center
1801 Oakland Blvd., Suite 250
Walnut Creek, CA 94596