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Surrogate Motherhood as Prenatal Adoption

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 April 2021

Bonnie Steinbock
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Extract

The recent case of Baby M has brought surrogate motherhood to the forefront of American attention. ultimately, whether we permit or prohibit surrogacy depends on what we take to be good reasons for preventing people from acting as they wish. A growing number of people want to be, or hire, surrogates; are there legitimate reasons to prevent them? Apart from its intrinsic interest, the issue of surrogate motherhood provides us with an opportunity to examine different justifications for limiting individual freedom.

In the first section of this article, I examine the Baby M case and the lessons it offers. In the second section, I examine claims that surrogacy is ethically unacceptable because it is exploitive, inconsistent with human dignity, or harmful to the children born of such arrangements. I conclude that these reasons justify restrictions on surrogate contracts, rather than an outright ban.

Type
Ethics
Information
Law, Medicine and Healthcare , Volume 16 , Issue 1-2 , Spring 1988 , pp. 44 - 50
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics 1988

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References

See, for example, “Surrogate Motherhood Agreements: Contemporary Legal Aspects of a Biblical Notion,” University of Richmond Law Review, 16 (1982): 470; “Surrogate Mothers: The Legal Issues,” American Journal of Law & Medicine, 7 (1981): 338, and Holder, Angela, Legal Issues in Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985), 8: “Where a surrogate mother decides that she does not want to give the baby up for adoption, as has already happened, it is clear that no court will enforce a contract entered into before the child was born in which she agreed to surrender her baby for adoption.” Emphasis added.Google Scholar
Had the Sterns been informed of the psychologist's concerns as to Ms. Whitehead's suitability to be a surrogate, they might have ended the arrangement, costing the Infertility Center its fee. As Chief Justice Wilentz said, “It is apparent that the profit motive got the better of the Infertility Center.” In the matter of Baby M, Supreme Court of New Jersey, A-39, at 45.Google Scholar
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