Only altruistic surrogacy should be legal

The argument

The argument turns on the difference a payment makes. By attaching financial incentive to surrogacy, a market is created in women's bodies, and that is held to be ethically wrong in itself: pregnancy becomes a service bought at a price, and the capacity to bear a child becomes something some people can purchase and others must sell. What makes this more than a matter of distaste is what a commercial market predictably does to who ends up pregnant. Where money is the inducement, the women who accept it will disproportionately be those who need it, which leads to situations of exploitation where women are utilising their bodies in a deeply intrusive way due to a need for money. Consent given in those circumstances is formally free but materially constrained, and the intrusion involved is not a small one. Removing the payment is presented as removing the mechanism rather than merely lowering the price. Altruistic surrogacy, where there is not a financial incentive, cannot select for financial desperation, because nothing is on offer that only a person in need of money would accept. Whoever comes forward does so for some reason other than money, which is precisely why the exploitation objection does not reach it. That leaves the positive case intact. Women should be able to have children out of the goodness of their hearts, in order to do a good deed for those who may not otherwise be able to have them, and a blanket prohibition on surrogacy would prevent that act along with the commercial arrangements it is aimed at. The conclusion is therefore a conditional one: surrogacy should be legal, but only in its altruistic form, because on this view it is the payment rather than the practice that creates the wrong.

Context

Many countries accept altruistic surrogacy but not commercial surrogacy because it is the financial aspect (exploitation of the mother and commodification of the baby) of the surrogacy that seems problematic. If no money is involved, then surrogacy is altruistic. While it is illegal to pay someone to be a surrogate in the UK, intended parents are expected to cover expenses.

Premises

Counter-arguments

In reality, “altruistic” surrogacy means that a woman goes through exactly the same thing as in commercial surrogacy, but gets nothing in return. It demands the woman to carry a child for nine months and then give it away. She has to change her behaviour and risk infertility, a number of pregnancy-related problems, and even death. She is still used as a vessel, even if told she is an angel. The only thing she gets is the halo of altruism, which is a very low price for the effort and can only be attractive in a society where women are valued for how much they sacrifice, not what they achieve. Countries that ban commercial surrogacy have the opposite desired effect by encouraging citizens to travel overseas for surrogacy.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P2] Only allowing surrogacy without payment only ensures that women are not valued for the labour they are providing.