Thorny ethical questions part 17

[axordil]

http://warner.blogs.nytimes.com/

Offshoring surrogant motherhood to India is now a USD 450M business. The ramifications are, well, creepy by our standards. Obviously, though, the money is exceptionally good by the standards of the women lining up to sign up for it.

Things like this make ME want to be a Luddite.

[nerdanel]

No. Not okay. No how, no way, never. It is deeply disturbing to me that this is remotely legal, in India or here. It is more deeply disturbing that wealthy (and mostly white) women appear to believe that they have a "right" to bear - oops, excuse me, have Indian women bear - "their" presumably biological children. It is the height of absurdity for these privileged, spoiled, entitled people (and their partners) to try to justify their actions with how much $6,000-$10,000 can improve the lives of the women concerned. I would advise them to advance their humanitarian aims by donating this sum to the biological parents of children who are up for adoption -- or simply to donate it altogether, and drop the idea that they are entitled to an Indian woman's womb because for whatever reason they can't (or won't - because that's where this is moving) bear their own biological children.

And yes, I am three times as incensed because I share some genetics with the designated womb women in this case. But this would be sickening regardless of the races of the parties involved.

ETA BTW, some things are not okay regardless of how much the money involved can improve the life of the poorer person. I firmly believe, for instance, that a Rich Western Man could not ethically hire an Indian prostitute, even if he paid her (or him!) $1,000,000 for a single contact and that had the prostitute set for life. Still not ethical, and if anything, MORE unethical because of the money involved. Bodies should not be for sale, in any sense - and most of all, the bodies of the poor should not be accessible to the rich based on the whims, desires, or conveniences of the rich.

[Frelga]

The reaction to this particular business transaction is largely horrified on the gut level, and that always makes me want to stop and figure out logically exactly why that is. Is this baby-farming business so abhorrent because it benefits the spoiled, rich white women?

First off, I think money should be irrelevant to any ethical question. If something can be ethically done for free, does paying for it automatically make it unethical?

I've met one (white, middle-class) woman who agreed to be a biological mother for someone else. I don't know what financial arrangements have been made, if any, but the womb mother felt proud and generous.

Me, it squicks me. I can't imagine carrying a child for nine months and giving it up - carrying it for the purpose of giving it up. I just can't.

And yet. Legal =/= moral, and illegal isn't always immoral. The Indian women, it appears, are not coerced in any way. If it is immoral to pay for them to bear someone else's child, assuming all the emotional and health-related risks for 9 months, isn't it even more unethical to sponsor perfectly legitimate businesses where much younger women assume all the emotional and health risks of hard labor in dangerous conditions, for life, with no hope of advancement?

[River]

First off, I think money should be irrelevant to any ethical question. If something can be ethically done for free, does paying for it automatically make it unethical?

It add complications. When no money is exchanged, it's easier to determine that consent is being given out of complete free will. When money enters the equation, the person being offered the money is going to feel some extra pressure because everyone needs money. A woman is put in a position where she's not sure she wants to carry a baby, but how can she say no when she's being offered money and her family is hungry? You open the door to a new form of the flesh trade.

[Frelga]

But isn't that true of any employment? Who would spend 50/80/90 hours a week making shoes or flipping burgers or writing computer codes, except that they are offered money to do it?

And yes, I'm being difficult on purpose. I'm rained in in a hotel room with lots of time on my hands and a wireless connection.

[axordil]

Is it any better or worse than selling one's organs for transplant?

Or selling one's plasma, if you want to talk about a less limited resource?

I am struggling with this. It rates SO high on the gut level ICK factor...but how does it compare with the other choices (if any) these women have?

[Maria]

There was a time when I was a stay at home mom, and we were really strapped for cash, that I wished there was somehow I could be a paid surrogate mother, but it wasn't really done back then. I'd only heard of it through sci fi. It would have given me a job I could do at home, while mothering my brood, and would have helped someone else have a baby that they otherwise could not have had.

I don't see a down side to this. I would have done it myself if the opportunity had arisen.... and if I could have gotten my husband to agree... It would have to be a pretty hefty fee, though. There's some serious wear and tear on the body during pregnancy.

[nerdanel]

First off, I think money should be irrelevant to any ethical question.

The Indian women, it appears, are not coerced in any way.

These two statements are potentially inconsistent. You cannot choose to ignore the HUGE coercive element (vast sums of money given to very poor women in a third world country) and then deem them not coerced.

If it is immoral to pay for them to bear someone else's child, assuming all the emotional and health-related risks for 9 months, isn't it even more unethical to sponsor perfectly legitimate businesses where much younger women assume all the emotional and health risks of hard labor in dangerous conditions, for life, with no hope of advancement?

Yes.

Ax: even worse, because your hypotheticals disregard the (by all accounts) huge emotional link between biological mother and child. The gendered nature of this issue also troubles me - that it is uniquely women who can be financially coerced into the "renting" of their wombs (not to mention the relinquishing of a child they carried for nine months, without the benefit of even American legal protections should they change their mind). And, the solution to improving limited choices of the lower-class in the third world is not to afford them an expanded set of horrendous choices.

[Teremia]

This issue is not black and white -- it's all sad grays.

It is exploitation to expect someone else to risk her life to produce a baby for money, no matter how much money that is. Poverty means not really having the freedom to say "no."

On the other hand, it is condescending for us rich people to tell a poor woman she MAY NOT carry a child for money, when that money may make a huge difference in her life.

In other words, it is because of injustice and the low status of women generally that women are out there willing to do this for money. (Or their families are willing to hire the women out -- ugly possibility. The fact that some of these women are motivated by the need to raise dowries for their daughters is just another symptom of these huge injustices.) But given that low status, carrying a child for a foreigner for a relatively large amount of money may be a very rational choice on the woman's part, and who are we to say she should be lugging dung or weaving rugs or whatever instead?

By the way, I tried to have a child for a dear friend (for free, naturally) -- didn't work, alas. So I'm not against the idea in general! Just very worried about the possibility for exploitation involved here.

[Primula Baggins]

The obsession some of these infertile couples have with having a child "of our own" at any cost is baffling to me—but, then, I had no trouble getting pregnant.

I agree that large sums of money are inherently coercive.

I have no problem with surrogacy as a gift. I would have done it, for family or a dear friend; pregnancy and birth were easy for me, almost zero risk. And I could look forward to a relationship with the child, who might even be related to me—as in the cases where a younger grandma carries a child for her daughter who can't, or one sister helps another.

[Maria]

It is exploitation to expect someone else to risk her life to produce a baby for money, no matter how much money that is. Poverty means not really having the freedom to say "no."

Many professions have a high degree of life risk to them.
America's most dangerous jobs

[axordil]

the solution to improving limited choices of the lower-class in the third world is not to afford them an expanded set of horrendous choices.

Mmm. I like the way you put that.

If it is about the money, would it make a difference if the women in question were being paid the same as an American women was paid? Or would that just be more coercive? Should this activity thus be limited to women who don't need the money and are doing it purely out of the goodness of their heart, all three of them? Isn't that basically a way of saying it shouldn't happen at all?

[River]

Well, if you can't carry your own biological child, should you have your own biological child? Are people entitled to their own biological child even if they have to subvert biology to produce it?

[axordil]

Subvert, or employ? It seems subversive to me only if one argues from design.

[axordil]

BTW, is this more a Tol question because of the ethics, or a Lasto question because of its currency?

[Primula Baggins]

I wouldn't say it's wrong to spend your own money to get something you truly want, as long as no one else is exploited or hurt in the process.

I do start to cringe when it's clear the surrogate is being hired for reasons of vanity (stretch marks! weight gain! eyewwww) or convenience, in cases where it would have been possible for the mother to carry the child herself.

[Frelga]

First off, I think money should be irrelevant to any ethical question.

The Indian women, it appears, are not coerced in any way.

These two statements are potentially inconsistent. You cannot choose to ignore the HUGE coercive element (vast sums of money given to very poor women in a third world country) and then deem them not coerced.

But how is offering very poor women vast sums of money and excellent medical care for a fairly short-term project worse than offering them tiny sums of money for back-breaking work that poisons and ruins their bodies? Isn't that an even worse form of coercion? Yet, while sweatshops may incite our sense of injustice the baby-farming provokes a deep-down gut-level outrage. Why?

[Sassafras]

Frelga wrote:

But how is offering very poor women vast sums of money and excellent medical care for a fairly short-term project worse than offering them tiny sums of money for back-breaking work that poisons and ruins their bodies? Isn't that an even worse form of coercion? Yet, while sweatshops may incite our sense of injustice the baby-farming provokes a deep-down gut-level outrage. Why?

Not in me it doesn't. I personally think that the greater moral outrage should be directed towards eliminating sweat-shop exploitation instead of women, of any class, culture or ethnicity, who choose to rent their bodies for profit.

A few posts up, Maria said that at one time she considered surrogacy for payment. Had it been possible in my youth I might easily have actually done it.

[solicitr]

You cannot choose to ignore the HUGE coercive element (vast sums of money given to very poor women in a third world country) and then deem them not coerced.

Sorry, I can't buy this. Was the Demi Moore character in Indecent Proposal coerced? Of course not- she had a free choice to turn down the money and walk. As the old joke goes: "We already know what you are, honey. Now we're just hagglin'."

[vison]

An Indian friend of ours is engaged in negotiations for a surrogate in India to have a child for him and his wife. His wife has not been able to conceive. The prospective surrogate is his wife's cousin. They are fairly well off people, landowners in the Punjab. I don't know how much money will change hands, if any. It may be that the woman wants to come to Canada and that our friend can arrange that. I don't know this woman's circumstances, whether she is married or single, widowed or divorced. (Our friend married a divorcee, quite rare in the Indo-Canadian community.)

I don't think it's immoral, although it may be unwise. I know a woman who was a surrogate for her sister and it worked out okay.

The outrage here is puzzling to me. If any woman is coerced, then it's wrong. If there is no coercion, what's the problem? Are we all too quick to assume that all Indian women are little better than slaves?

And, as someone else said, it beats the hell out of making shoes for those same spoiled, rich, white women in North America and earning 30 cents an hour doing it.

By the way, not all rich white women are spoiled and evil. Some of them are perfectly nice people who simply cannot conceive a child. This is not due to them being spoiled or rotten in any way, but rather due to a massive increase in the numbers of human beings of all races around the world who cannot conceive a child. The sperm count of the human male has dropped like a rock over the last couple of decades, a problem of far more concern than a few women having babies for other people.