Surrogacy has always been with us. In the Book of Genesis, Abraham and Sarah’s first child, Ishmael, was conceived and carried by their Egyptian handmaiden, Hagar. In one of our own contemporary epic myths—The Archers—the mother to Adam and Ian’s son Xander is their Bulgarian friend, Lexi.
What has changed in recent times, as the Law Commission’s public consultation and subsequent report acknowledged this year, is that the British public has become far more supportive of surrogacy. My unscientific trawl of the latest BBC reports on the theme revealed only positive stories, such as one by Jaipal, a BBC Young Reporter, which tries to “dispel any negativity surrounding the issue”. During the 2010s, the number of couples applying for parental orders to transfer legal parentage from a surrogate almost quadrupled, to 413 per year.
Supporters of surrogacy can point to a number of compelling moral arguments. Socially liberal mores place a high value on individual choice and bodily autonomy. It is generally agreed that whatever a person wishes to do with their own body is down to them, unless it causes harm to others. This would seem to make any ban on surrogacy an unwarranted curtailment of personal freedom.
Also, the right to be allowed to become a parent has slowly morphed into the right to be helped become one. Fertility treatment is no longer considered an elective medical intervention but a corrective one, which everyone should be entitled to. Surrogacy is seen as part of the suite of options for those who struggle to conceive, although in the UK the legal process of transferring parenthood can only begin after birth.
These arguments are brought together by the fact that around one third of parental orders are issued to same-sex couples. Because it is the only route for gay men to have biological children, surrogacy has become linked to support for gay rights.
Yet surrogacy remains controversial, years on from the contrasting experiences of its pioneers. When Kim Cotton acted as a paid surrogate for a Swedish couple in 1985, she was vilified in press headlines such as “Born to be sold” and “No better than prostitution”. Cotton had no regrets and, in 1988, founded the charity Childlessness Overcome Through Surrogacy. The first American to be legally paid as a surrogate, however, found the experience of giving up a child too much. Under her pseudonym, Elizabeth Kane, she became an anti-surrogacy advocate, writing about her regrets in a book called Birth Mother.
The quasi-sacred status of motherhood in almost all cultures is an obstacle to universal support for surrogacy, which is seen as threatening the supposedly sacrosanct mother-child bond.
More generally, the principle of not using human beings as tools has a rich philosophical pedigree. “Act that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, always at the same time as an end, never merely as a means,” wrote Kant. We are not even entitled to treat ourselves as mere means to an end, which surrogate mothers arguably do, however noble their motives.
Against the claims of liberal freedom, there is the question of how voluntary surrogacy is. There are people who find it a positive experience. But when money is involved there is the potential for exploitation, as there is with organ donation. Someone may choose to sell a kidney, but if they would never have done so unless they desperately needed the money, how free is that choice? Similarly, if a surrogate would not have carried a child without payment, that may imply a need that made the choice somewhat forced. (Surrogacy for profit is illegal in the UK.)
It is on these grounds that radical feminists such as Julie Bindel have recently been pushing back against the normalisation of surrogacy. Rather than an extension of women’s freedom, they see it as another example of women’s bodies being used for the benefit of others. It is striking that Hagar was a handmaiden and Lexi was a migrant fruit picker from an eastern European country: both foreigners less privileged than the people they were helping to become parents.
In moral debates, we yearn for a decisive argument that shows a practice is right or wrong. But often, as here, there are good arguments on both sides. One argument even works both ways: because parenthood is so valued, we can believe that a couple has a right to do whatever it takes to have their own child while also being uncomfortable (at the very least) when a woman gives away a baby she is the biological mother of.
Perhaps, in this case, ambivalence is the right attitude. Surrogacy has worked for many couples and brought much happiness into the world. But it is fraught with the potential for heartbreak and exploitation, as the biblical case study warned. Once God decided Sarah should be allowed to conceive a biological son after all, she turned against Hagar and Ishmael, successfully imploring Abraham to cast them out into the wilderness.
Were surrogacy to became more widespread, it could also further normalise the instrumental use of human bodies. What’s more, it reinforces the questionable idea that parenthood is a right, although it may be too late to counter that. When the only viable solution is an imperfect one, it can be right to pursue it. But accepting a practice without condemnation does not mean we have to encourage it with enthusiasm.
