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TechnoratiAn indulgence of adult desires
Surrogate motherhood isn't about forming families; it is about satisfying adult desires.
Nothing like the Christmas season to remind us how selfish and adult-centred we should be.
No, you’re right. That doesn’t sound very good.
I have been struggling for a while now to come up with a good logical reason why I dislike stories about surrogate motherhood like this one (requires free registration to the New York Times website). In “Her Body, My Baby,” New York City writer/socialite Alex Kuczynski tells the often heart-wrenching story of how she went from wanting a baby to having a baby. It’s a journey most people go through reasonably straightforwardly but in her case it involved no end of medical complications, ultimately resolved by cutting-edge science, tens of thousands of dollars, and a spare womb inside a 43-year-old Pennsylvania substitute schoolteacher.
You should read the article for yourself, when you’re in the mood and have a good cup of coffee handy. It is very long but also very detailed, and remarkably honest for a woman famous for having written a book about plastic surgery.
I should state at the outset that I sympathize with Ms. Kuczynski’s desire to be a mother and with the pain her own inability to carry a child to term therefore caused her. I also wish to keep an open mind about the surrogate mother, Cathy, and her expressed desire to be “needed in a profound, unique way.” I admit I don’t get it (pregnancy and childbirth for the pure altruistic fun of it?), but I accept it as presented. And most importantly, I do not want to imply that Max, Ms. Kuczynski’s son, did not deserve to live. His conduct is blameless. And he’s here now, so let’s leave him out of the story. But it is possible to approve of an end and still disapprove of the means.
The question here is, why does surrogate motherhood make many of us recoil? Even so-called “gestational surrogacy,” where the surrogate mother did not contribute her egg to the equation, which is the sort Ms. Kuczynski had. In this kind of assisted pregnancy the child that emerges from the surrogate mother is the biological offspring of the parents who will raise him. He has no genetic connection to his “host mother”. The woman who carries him and nurtures him in utero and goes through the pain of childbirth for him must give him up – for, after all, he is not hers.
There’s something very wrong about that. The question is, what?
Yes, the objective is to produce a child, which is good. Yes, all people involved participate voluntarily, which is good. Yes, the surrogate mother, who agreed to the arrangement, is well looked after medically and is compensated financially for her services. It does not sound like exploitation. But it is.
When the prospective parents look for a suitable candidate, they look at her reproductive history, her health, her family situation, and all manner of personal details. Even if you agree to put yourself on the rent-a-womb block, the fact remains that selecting a candidate based on her breeding record is, at the very least, crass objectifying. I’m re-reading Uncle Tom’s Cabin these days, and I can’t help seeing images of potential buyers examining the “merchandise” by looking into its mouth. Yes, its.
“Whoa, honey! Check out the size of that uterus!”
Not very dignified.
Sometimes I envy religious folks. They seem to have such a clearer view of what’s right and what’s not. For instance, the Vatican just released Dignitas Personae, a set of guidelines for the modern bio-ethics age. It reasserts that “any form of surrogate motherhood” is “illicit”.
The reasons are outlined in an earlier document, Donum Vitae:
“Surrogate motherhood represents an objective failure to meet the obligations of maternal love, of conjugal fidelity and of responsible motherhood; it offends the dignity and the right of the child to be conceived, carried in the womb, brought into the world and brought up by his own parents; it sets up, to the detriment of families, a division between the physical, psychological and moral elements which constitute those families.”
Basically, the Church appears to think that the only morally licit way to produce children is via the conjugal act between man and wife. Who knew the crusty old moralists were so keen on the fun part?
It’s all fine and good to be against offending the dignity of a child. And certainly one can object, with current techniques, to how assisted reproduction treats the other children: the discarded “superfluous” embryos, those left behind in the Petri dishes, the ones frozen and never thawed, and the ones conceived with donor gametes who will never know their genetic history. It’s also quite fine to promote conjugal fidelity and happy, fruitful marriages. But surrogacy doesn’t have to involve unfaithfulness or unhappiness. And it’s not quite enough to explain my reaction against surrogate motherhood.
No. What bothers me most about it is that it is part of a wider culture that promotes and aggressively encourages anything that lets adults indulge their every whim and fancy. On any given day, countless women go for an abortion while countless others go through invasive assisted reproductive techniques while other women wait to have their uterus chosen to carry someone else’s precious embryo or their ovaries plucked so they can sell their eggs. The only moral standard here is that whatever I want is right, and must be mine. It is not possible to build a coherently decent society on such a basis.
Methinks it’s also not a very grown-up way to behave.
Brigitte Pellerin is a writer and broadcaster based in Ottawa.
Photo Credit: karindalziel via Flickr
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It always knocks me out, how green the Church is.
This is a topic that can’t completely be discussed in a small article or a few posts. People using the word “whim” or “fancy” is probably not desirable terminology. In reality this can be a painful subject for some, and may lead people to be defensive about their positions. It may be helpful if people can step back and really look at the issue with an open mind. The Church makes sense. Surrogacy separates the act of union between husband and wife. Also, I’m not sure if this works like invitro, but with invitro babies are created knowing that some will die. That is simply wrong. People should look at the reason why they want a child of their own flesh and blood instead of adopting or fosterparenting or accepting the cross of not having children at all. That may lead them to see if they are trying to fufill God’s will. Anyway, everyone can get defensive of their viewpoints, but like I said, it is a topic that can’t be discussed fully in an article or two.
“If people for whatever reason cannot have a baby on their own then surrogacy is one way for them to achieve the joy of having a child.”
That’s the selfish part right there. Treating the human body of another as a market commodity (no matter if she consents) is not a justifiable means to meet that end. This is just as horrible as the old practice of men keeping concubines in case the wife is infertile.
They may have taken away the fun part, but the exploitation of another person’s fertility to satisfy your own desires is no different in moral stature from the old practice.
“Heck, using your terms, it seems like physical labor equals prostitution.”
Not quite. Physical labor is a skill that does not require the surrender of one’s innate human dignity. If any, labor is actually quite edifying.
Giving one’s body for the use and exploitation of another though, is what makes surrogacy tantamount to prostitution.
The surrogate is being paid for the use of her body in exactly the same way that a prostitute is paid for the use of her body
Same with an egg donor. Heck, using your terms, it seems like physical labor equals prostitution.
I staunchly support a culture of life but to call this immoral and dismiss it as whim-fulfillment seems wrong.
People have an innate desire to have their own flesh and blood, biological offspring and surrogacy is done when all other options have failed. As for the bonding, I don’t believe there is much bonding in utero. Other than a mother’s heartbeat and *possibly* muffled voice the baby has nothing to imprint on. It’s the direct physical care after birth that matters.
The only way I could see this as monstrous would be along the lines of a wealthy trophy wife engaging a surrogate mother to create an accessory without altering her lifestyle or “damaging” her figure.
A person may feel they are called to adopt, they may feel otherwise. Private feelings can’t be a solid basis for public policy.
The argument from nature seems an especially weak one since we have all sorts of medical procedures that are not found in nature, organ transplantation comes to mind. Should that be stopped because it is not ‘natural’? For that matter most of the drugs we use to treat illnesses are artificially manufactured, should we not use them and just let the diseases they treat take their ‘natural’ course?
It would seem to me that if someone is infertil then they are possibly called to a very noble thing...adoption or foster parenting. We all have a desire to have a child of our own flesh and blood, but that doesn’t mean we can go to all measures to achieve that.
A child is more then a want, it’s a human being. As someone who has given birth myself a few times, I was educated that through pregnancy, birth, and breast feeding a mother’s body naturally bonds with her child. No where in nature biologically does a another female carries offspring for another. As mammals, we are born immature, in the sense we are defenseless and attach to our mothers for care. The term mammals actually comes from the term mammary and our ability to lactate. Currently the CDC in the United States is trying to promote breastfeeding, for the benefit of baby and mother.
In surrogacy you are severing the bond that was created for 40 weeks and during child birth. The woman is being paid NOT to care about the baby, the baby on the other hand has bonded, and being removed from the only mother it knows despite not being genetically related to her. My thoughts on surrogacy has changed my views on adoption of infants. If mothers know that they had the ability and support to care for their infants they would be less likely to be compelled to having an abortion or ‘giving up’ the baby.
Bonds are created no matter how much man-made science creates a baby or how much money is exchanged or how much the baby was ‘wanted’. All the time we hear about mother/child reunions from adoption or the importance of bonding through breastfeeding and skin to skin contact with mother and child, yet for the rules for surrogacy none of this applies all that matters is their wants. For it is an industry and it is all about not offending the customers (infertile couples) and their desires.
This is an unnecessarily snarky and ill-informed piece of writing which drastically oversimplifies an incredibly complex (and closely legally regulated) process. Surrogacy is NOT a whim or fancy. It’s a last resort for people who for whatever reason cannot carry their own children to term. For some, it’s because they are a gay couple. For some it’s because they are suffering from infertility--the causes of which are all too often oblique even to the most experienced professionals. For others, like myself, it’s because of a birth defect in the female reproductive organs. I am fertile, and in fact have had eight pregnancies, all of which have ended in the premature death of my infants. To characterize the choice my husband and I made to enter into a surrogacy agreement as a “whim” and just something that I “fancy” is resoundingly insulting and ignorant. Our beloved children (we were blessed with twins) are not a fashion accessory or a fad for us. They represent our hopes and our dreams, and in their eyes and smiles we see our ancestors--my son resembles my deceased mother, while my daughter resembles her other grandmother, who has also sadly passed on. Without our children, both of our family lines would have died with us.
The implication in your article is that if people are unable to conceive and carry children “naturally” they should either “just” adopt, or face a life barren of the joys of parenthood. Why is it that people cursed with infertility are held to some moral imperative intruding on their rights to seek MEDICAL intervention, while the majority of people out there in the world (including those thousands who choose to have abortions) can reproduce with utter abandon, not even taking into account their ability to parent or even provide for the products of their actions?
I am just glad that you, Ms. Pellerin, clearly don’t have to struggle with the agony of infertility. Methinks your tune might change if you did.
I wrote a paper on the ethics of surrogacy when I was in university. I started out in favour, but all my research led to the inescapable conclusion that it is absolutely not ethical. While I sympathize wholeheartedly with couples that have infertility issues (many of my friends are living with this heartache), I cannot agree that any means necessary are justified in achieving the desired end of a child. No matter how good it all sounds, in the final analysis, the surrogate is being used as a means to an end. It doesn’t matter whether she is willing and well-compensated, or that the child is wanted and loved. The surrogate is being paid for the use of her body in exactly the same way that a prostitute is paid for the use of her body. A human being should never, ever be treated as a means to an end, no matter how good the end may be.
In this review of Prof. Donald Demarco’s book on assisted reproductive technologies,
http://www.billmuehlenberg.com/1993/10/11/a-review-of-biotechnology-and-the-assault-on-parenthood-by-donald-de-marco/
the point is made that simply because a desire is good in itself doesn’t give one the absolute right to have it fulfilled. The example given by the author of the review is that of the desire to marry a person-- itself a good and honourable desire, a part of human nature (like the desire to have children). However, what if the object of one’s honourable desire doesn’t want to get married? Does one then have the absolute right to marry that person, because the desire is not wrong in itself?
This article fails to convince me that the underlying agenda of surrogacy is to satisfy adult desires. At best, it conveys that it’s a bit unpretty when all the components are examined individually. Embyros being discarded and unused - yes, I disagree with that wholeheartedly. But in the instances where all embryos are used, I’m afraid that even if I squint and tilt my head to the side I still cannot see the moral wrong that you feel is so obvious. Sure, surrogacy may not be as pleasant and warm as natural pregnancy in a marital relationship, but I find it far-fetched to include it alongside elective abortion in the culture of selfishness and death. Those who turn to science to intervene where their bodies fail them are doing everything they can to create a life. Those with the natural gift of chldbirth who treat their unborn children like hostages in the womb to dispose at will are doing everything they can to destroy a life. I find it unfair to lump these two extremes under the same umbrella of “whatever I want is right and must be mine.” And it strikes me as a flippant and cold statement to assert that surrogacy is reflective of a culture that “lets adults indulge their every whim and fancy.” The agony in realizing that one will never become a natural mother would be a heart-wrenching devastation, not an unfulfilled entitlement complex.
Whilst the desire to produce a child that carries half your genes is at one level a selfish instinctual imperative, the time, effort, love and sacrifice that must be made to raise a child to be a decent, thinking human being and a productive member of society is the very definition of the word selfless. If people for whatever reason cannot have a baby on their own then surrogacy is one way for them to achieve the joy of having a child. Surely no child was ever more wanted than one who comes into the world after such a difficult process.
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