Debating Surrogacy
Published on 23. April 2024
Book
Paperback/Softback
248 pages
978-0-19-007217-9 (ISBN)
Description
Surrogacy is the commissioning of a woman to gestate and give birth to a child for another would-be parent. The practice raises several ethical questions, such as the commodification of the surrogate and of the baby, and the exploitation of the surrogate, issues which have been extensively debated. This book offers a fresh take on surrogacy, by concentrating on questions which bear on its justifiability: Is providing gestational services a permissible way of employing a woman's body? Indeed, is it a legitimate form of work? Are the children born out of surrogacy in any way wronged by surrogacy agreements?
In the first part of the book, Christine Straehle proposes an account of surrogacy work as legitimate work for women, as a way to realize certain goals in women's lives through the fruit of their labour. She defends a right to become a surrogate as necessary to protect women's autonomy. Anca Gheaus criticises surrogacy by arguing that it always wrongs children--whether or not it also harms them--by disrespecting them; therefore, gestational services are impermissible. In the second part, Straehle responds to Gheaus, questioning that children are wronged by the practice of surrogacy. Instead, she defends an intentional model of parental rights, which indicates that having a child through surrogacy should count as a ground to assign parental rights. In her response, Gheaus objects that Straehle's view fails to properly account for the interests of either surrogates or children. However, she accepts that women may gestate without the intention to have custody over the newborn, and is therefore open to some kind of post-surrogacy practice that would radically depart, in the allocation of legal parenthood, from any historical or currently proposed form of surrogacy.
In the first part of the book, Christine Straehle proposes an account of surrogacy work as legitimate work for women, as a way to realize certain goals in women's lives through the fruit of their labour. She defends a right to become a surrogate as necessary to protect women's autonomy. Anca Gheaus criticises surrogacy by arguing that it always wrongs children--whether or not it also harms them--by disrespecting them; therefore, gestational services are impermissible. In the second part, Straehle responds to Gheaus, questioning that children are wronged by the practice of surrogacy. Instead, she defends an intentional model of parental rights, which indicates that having a child through surrogacy should count as a ground to assign parental rights. In her response, Gheaus objects that Straehle's view fails to properly account for the interests of either surrogates or children. However, she accepts that women may gestate without the intention to have custody over the newborn, and is therefore open to some kind of post-surrogacy practice that would radically depart, in the allocation of legal parenthood, from any historical or currently proposed form of surrogacy.
Reviews / Votes
For an excellent sense of what can lead to principled disagreement about whether surrogacy is permissible-even between those who accept that women should be free to make reproductive choices-read no further than this debate. The exchange of views Gheaus and Straehle offer is intelligent, well-informed, clearly written and philosophically literate with each side's position founded on important normative commitments about what it means to be a parent and what is owed to the future child. * David Archard, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy, Queen's University Belfast * Surrogacy continues to attract controversy-understandably so. In this book, Gheaus and Straehle outline, in the form of a debate, philosophical arguments for and against. They do with clarity, rigour, imagination, and intellectual generosity towards each other. A must-read not just for applied ethicists but for anyone who is interested in this difficult issue. * Cecile Fabre, All Souls College, Oxford *More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Unsewn / adhesive bound
Dimensions
Height: 207 mm
Width: 137 mm
Thickness: 17 mm
Weight
290 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-19-007217-9 (9780190072179)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
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Anca Gheaus | Christine Straehle
Debating Surrogacy
Book
01/2024
Oxford University Press Inc
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Anca Gheaus | Christine Straehle
Debating Surrogacy
E-Book
01/2024
OUP eBook
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Available for download
Anca Gheaus | Christine Straehle
Debating Surrogacy
E-Book
01/2024
OUP eBook
€19.49
Available for download
Persons
Anca Gheaus is a political philosopher interested in justice and the normative significance of personal relationships, and is co-editor of The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Childhood and Children (2018) and published numerous journal articles and book chapters, primarily on issues concerning childrearing, gender justice, love, non-ideal theory, relational versus distributive egalitarianism, and methodological issues in political theory.
Christine Straehle is Professor for Practical Philosophy at the University of Hamburg and Professor of Ethics and Applied Ethics at the University of Ottawa. Before her appointment in Hamburg, she was also the inaugural and founding director of the Centre for Philosophy, Politics and Economics in the Faculty of Philosophy at Groningen University in 2016, where she also held the Chair in Philosophy and Public Affairs. She was awarded several prizes and prestigious fellowships, such as the Kitty Newman Prize for Social Philosophy from the
Royal Society of Canada in 2019, and, most recently in 2023, a senior research fellowship at the Swedish Collegium of Advanced Studies.
Christine Straehle is Professor for Practical Philosophy at the University of Hamburg and Professor of Ethics and Applied Ethics at the University of Ottawa. Before her appointment in Hamburg, she was also the inaugural and founding director of the Centre for Philosophy, Politics and Economics in the Faculty of Philosophy at Groningen University in 2016, where she also held the Chair in Philosophy and Public Affairs. She was awarded several prizes and prestigious fellowships, such as the Kitty Newman Prize for Social Philosophy from the
Royal Society of Canada in 2019, and, most recently in 2023, a senior research fellowship at the Swedish Collegium of Advanced Studies.
Content
Introduction, Anca Gheaus and Christine Straehle
Surrogacy defined
Surrogacy and The Law
Ethical Worries Surrounding Surrogacy
The Book
Part One:
Defending Surrogacy as Reproductive Labour, Christine Straehle
Introduction
I. Surrogacy and Free Occupational Choice
I.1. Why is freedom of occupational choice important in liberal theory?
I.2. Two Justifications for the Right to Freedom of Occupational Choice
II. Surrogacy, Autonomy and Individual Agency
II.1. Reasons for Limits: Harm to Self, Harm to Society and Professionalization
II. 2. Surrogacy and the Limits of Freedom of Professional Choice
III. Surrogacy, Commercialization, Reproduction and Parenting
III.1. Surrogacy as Commercialization vs Surrogacy as Parenting
III.2. Surrogacy and gendered society
III.3. Surrogacy as Harm to Society: applying market norms to the family sphere
IV. Surrogacy As Work
IV.1. Professional requirements and justifiable limits
IV. 2. Surrogacy as licensed work
Conclusion
Notes
Against Private Surrogacy: A Child-Centered View, Anca Gheaus
I. Introduction
II. The intuitive case against surrogacy
III. Parents, their rights, and the interests of children
III.1. General assumptions
III.2. The right to become a parent
III.3. Parents' rights and children's interests
III. 4. Two caveats
IV. What is surrogacy? Three models
IV.1. The child-trafficking model
IV.2. The privately arranged adoption model
IV.3. The provision of services and gametes model
V. Full Surrogacy with intending parents' gametes
V.1. Child-centered appeals to genetic connections and the right to parent
V.3. Appeals to the gestational connection
V.4. Creatures of attachment: the general impermissibility of surrogacy agreements
VI. Harm to children? The challenge from the non-identity problem
VII. Conclusion: a respectful and humane form of surrogacy
Notes
Part Two
What's in it for the Baby? - Weighing Children's and Parents' Interests in Commercial Surrogacy Agreements - A Reply to Gheaus, Christine Straehle
I. Introduction
II. Where we agree: The interests of children
III. Where we disagree: Relationships
IV. Where we disagree: the role of the state
Conclusion
Notes
Women and Children First - A Reply to Straehle, Anca Gheaus
I. Introduction
II. Where we agree: gestating for another
III. Where we disagree: the women
IV. Where we disagree: the children
V. Is Straehle's hybrid defence of surrogacy stable?
Conclusions
Notes
Index
Surrogacy defined
Surrogacy and The Law
Ethical Worries Surrounding Surrogacy
The Book
Part One:
Defending Surrogacy as Reproductive Labour, Christine Straehle
Introduction
I. Surrogacy and Free Occupational Choice
I.1. Why is freedom of occupational choice important in liberal theory?
I.2. Two Justifications for the Right to Freedom of Occupational Choice
II. Surrogacy, Autonomy and Individual Agency
II.1. Reasons for Limits: Harm to Self, Harm to Society and Professionalization
II. 2. Surrogacy and the Limits of Freedom of Professional Choice
III. Surrogacy, Commercialization, Reproduction and Parenting
III.1. Surrogacy as Commercialization vs Surrogacy as Parenting
III.2. Surrogacy and gendered society
III.3. Surrogacy as Harm to Society: applying market norms to the family sphere
IV. Surrogacy As Work
IV.1. Professional requirements and justifiable limits
IV. 2. Surrogacy as licensed work
Conclusion
Notes
Against Private Surrogacy: A Child-Centered View, Anca Gheaus
I. Introduction
II. The intuitive case against surrogacy
III. Parents, their rights, and the interests of children
III.1. General assumptions
III.2. The right to become a parent
III.3. Parents' rights and children's interests
III. 4. Two caveats
IV. What is surrogacy? Three models
IV.1. The child-trafficking model
IV.2. The privately arranged adoption model
IV.3. The provision of services and gametes model
V. Full Surrogacy with intending parents' gametes
V.1. Child-centered appeals to genetic connections and the right to parent
V.3. Appeals to the gestational connection
V.4. Creatures of attachment: the general impermissibility of surrogacy agreements
VI. Harm to children? The challenge from the non-identity problem
VII. Conclusion: a respectful and humane form of surrogacy
Notes
Part Two
What's in it for the Baby? - Weighing Children's and Parents' Interests in Commercial Surrogacy Agreements - A Reply to Gheaus, Christine Straehle
I. Introduction
II. Where we agree: The interests of children
III. Where we disagree: Relationships
IV. Where we disagree: the role of the state
Conclusion
Notes
Women and Children First - A Reply to Straehle, Anca Gheaus
I. Introduction
II. Where we agree: gestating for another
III. Where we disagree: the women
IV. Where we disagree: the children
V. Is Straehle's hybrid defence of surrogacy stable?
Conclusions
Notes
Index