Should surrogacy be legal?

Surrogacy is a natural way to have babies who are wanted

Question: Should surrogacy be legal?
Position1 of 3›: Yes, surrogacy should be legal.
Argument1 of 4›: Surrogacy is a natural way to have babies who are wanted

With surrogacy, we are sure that parents have a real desire for a child.

The argument

Proponents of this position begin by comparing surrogacy with the ordinary route to parenthood. There is no permission needed to have babies naturally, and some people who have children are unprepared to parent or do not want their children at all. Nothing in the natural process tests whether a child is wanted; the child arrives, and the question of preparation comes up afterwards, if it comes up at all. Surrogacy inverts that order. People who use surrogates are undertaking an expensive and arduous process in order to have a child, demonstrating that the child will then be well cared for. The surrogacy process ensures that parents have a real desire and motivation for a child, because nobody completes it inadvertently or half-heartedly — the cost, the duration and the difficulty act as a filter that unplanned parenthood never has to pass. Because having a child born of surrogacy is so arduous, these children are more likely to be wanted and therefore are born into a more welcoming environment. Proponents also resist the idea that money entering the process makes it novel or unnatural. Payments connected with fertility are not new. Surrogacy is a continuation of the longstanding history of payment for sperm donations ("Ivy League sperm"), and the wider practice is neither marginal nor untested. In the United States alone in 2001, roughly 41,000 children were born through assisted reproduction, 6,000 of whom were created through the use of "donated" eggs and 600 of whom were carried by surrogates. In 2003, Americans adopted 21,616 children through international adoptions and gave birth to thousands of babies using commercially purchased sperm. Set against that background, surrogacy is one arrangement among many by which children already arrive in families that sought them deliberately. Because surrogacy is a natural way to have babies who are wanted, surrogacy should be legal.

Premises

[P1]People can have children naturally with no permission, and some are unprepared to parent or do not want their children at all. [P2] By contrast, those who use surrogates undertake an expensive and arduous process that demonstrates a genuine desire and motivation for a child. [P3] Children born through surrogacy are therefore more likely to be wanted and born into a welcoming, well-prepared environment. [C] Therefore, because surrogacy is a natural way to have babies who are genuinely wanted, surrogacy should be legal.

Counter-arguments

Surrogacy does not guarantee that those who utilise it will be good parents - it is entirely possible that people will go through the process and still fail their children. Many people do not use surrogates for medical reasons, but instead because they do not want to take time off work or carry a child. Additionally, the debate around surrogacy should be concerned primarily with the wellbeing of the surrogate, rather than the child.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Surrogacy does not guarantee that users will be good parents.