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Surrogacy: A Preferred Treatment for Infertility?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 April 2021

Nadine Taub
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Extract

No matter what one's position, Baby M is a difficult case. Once a child of contract parenthood has come into being, sorting out the competing claims that changed intentions produce is inevitably a troubling process. Even when taken in the abstract, surrogacy arrangements raise disturbing questions: Can we expand the available options for forming families without risking sex, race, and class exploitation? Can we address the pain experienced by those unable to conceive and bear children without commodifying human life? Whatever our views of surrogacy, we cannot hope to resolve the dilemmas it poses without acknowledging and seeking to address the pain of infertility.

Given what we know about infertility, is commercial surrogacy—however troublesome—an appropriate response? Even with only partial information before us, the answer would seem to be a fairly clear no. Surrogacy is at best an after-the-fact accommodation to the problem of infertility, available only to those with substantial financial resources.

Type
Public Health
Information
Law, Medicine and Healthcare , Volume 16 , Issue 1-2 , Spring 1988 , pp. 89 - 95
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics 1988

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