Should laws permit surrogate motherhood?

There are two types of maternal surrogacy: 'traditional' and gestational. The technique of gestational surrogacy involves interventions in the physiology of the genetic mother by hormonal stimulation to induce the production of several eggs and synchronize her menstrual cycle with that of the surrogate.

Pro: Surrogate motherhood solves the problem of infertility.

Pro: Surrogate motherhood provides women with another option in life. The motives for surrogate mothers may include the enjoyment of pregnancy, sympathy with infertile couples, and remorse resulting from having had an abortion.

Pro: Women have the right to decide how to use their bodies.

Pro: Surrogacy may liberate women from traditional expectations that they raise the babies to which they give birth.

Pro: Surrogate motherhood is widely accepted.

Con: Surrogate motherhood is widely regarded as unnatural.

Pro: Some surrogate mothers have been pleased with their arrangements.

Con: Some surrogate mothers have been unwilling to part with their children and have reneged on their agreements.

Con: The arrangement exploits women. Surrogate motherhood may create a class of breeders—poor women who produce children for the affluent. Affluent women are very unlikely to produce children for childless, disadvantaged adults.

Con: Humans are not commodities; people do not own others. Surrogate motherhood is no more than baby selling. While some blood donors and sperm donors receive payment, they are at worst selling a body part, not a human being.

Reply: The surrogate mother does not own the child that she delivers. The payment that she receives is for her services, not for the child that she gives to the party that hired her. So surrogate motherhood is not baby selling.

Con: The mother who gives her child away could be grief-stricken and feel guilty. The emotional anguish felt by the woman who gives up her child exceeds the joy felt by the person who receives the child. Surrogate motherhood runs counter to the deepest instincts of a pregnant woman and of a woman who has given birth, namely, the instincts to keep the baby near, to protect and nourish it.

Con: There can be undesirable psychological effects on the grown-up child of the surrogate mother. The child of a surrogate mother might, for example, suffer low self-esteem.

Con: Those who have contracted with a surrogate to receive a child may be grief-stricken if the surrogate reneges on her agreement. Courts are not likely to enforce contracts involving surrogate motherhood. Indeed, such arrangements may be illegal.