Surrogacy is a practical solution

The argument

Proponents of this position argue that the choice is not between surrogacy and no surrogacy, but between surrogacy that can be regulated and surrogacy that happens elsewhere, beyond the reach of any regulator. A large amount of surrogacy currently takes place overseas in developing nations, and restrictive surrogacy laws in Western countries are what send it there. More than 25,000 children are now born to surrogate mothers in India each year, and these women are often kept in undesirable conditions while pregnant. The mechanism, on this account, is straightforward. Prohibition does not remove the wish to have children; it removes only the lawful means of acting on that wish at home. Prospective couples and individuals who cannot arrange a surrogacy where they live are driven to find surrogates overseas, and demand accumulates in the jurisdictions where oversight is weakest and where the surrogate has the least bargaining power. Restrictive laws in one country thus boost the surrogacy economy of another, producing large numbers of surrogate births for Westerners under conditions for the surrogates themselves that proponents describe as questionable. The restriction achieves nothing it was meant to achieve; it relocates the practice, and with it the harm. Legalising surrogacy reverses that logic by bringing the arrangement inside a system that can set terms. Where surrogacy is lawful, the surrogate can hold enforceable rights: over her medical care, over the conditions in which she carries the pregnancy, and over the agreement she has entered into, with recourse if it is broken. A ban can offer no surrogate anywhere protection of that kind. On this argument legalisation is the practical solution precisely because it is the only arrangement under which surrogates are not left working under exploitative circumstances, and surrogacy should therefore be legal.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Legalising surrogacy in Western countries would not stop the exploitative conditions of surrogate mothers overseas. Surrogate services in developing countries would remain cheaper than in Western countries and people would still use them. Additionally, legalising surrogacy would then move the exploitation closer to home, opening up opportunities for women in Western countries to also be exploited as those in developing countries are.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P2] Legalising surrogacy would still mean women are being exploited - it would just be women domestically who are exploited.

Further reading

Baker, B. (1996) A case for permitting altruistic surrogacy. Hypatia, 11(2), 34-48 Krawiec and Busby, K. & Vun, D. (2009) Revisiting The Handmaid's Tale: Feminist Theory Meets Empirical Research on Surrogate Mothers, 26 CAN. J. FAM. L. 13(44). Teman, E. (2010) Birthing a Mother: The surrogate body and the pregnant self. Los Angeles: University of California Press. van den Akker, O. (2017) Surrogate Motherhood Families. London:Palgrave MacMillan.