The Ethical Implications of Surrogacy

You’re born, you go to school, you graduate, you get a job, you get married, you have kids, you retire, you die. This is the middle of the road expectation for people across our continent. However, many Australians are unable to meet one or more of these expectations. In particular, thousands are unable to have children for varying reasons. In these cases, hopeful parents often look to surrogacy. This essay will firstly explain what surrogacy is, secondly discuss the benefits of it and, finally, explore the ethical implications of participating in a surrogacy arrangement.

Surrogacy is the act of becoming pregnant, with the intention of passing the baby on to another family at birth. Types of surrogacy are classified firstly by the process of impregnation and secondly by the terms or agreement between the surrogate mother and intended parents. When a surrogate mother is impregnated with either the sperm of a donor or the intended father, using her own ovum, this is classified as a traditional surrogacy. In this case, the child has the DNA of the surrogate. When the surrogate is impregnated with an existing embryo consisting of a sperm either from the intended father or donor, and an egg either from the intended mother or donor, this is called a gestational surrogacy. In this case, the child shares no genes with their surrogate mother. The next method of classifying surrogacy is by the agreement of the intended parents. When the surrogate mother volunteers to carry the child, and is not given any financial compensation aside from covering medical costs, this is called altruistic surrogacy. By contrast, commercial surrogacy is when a surrogate is paid to carry the child (Human Rights Campaign, 2011). In Australia, an average of 60 surrogate babies are born per year through altruistic surrogacy, while hundreds are estimated to be born overseas through commercial surrogacy, and are then transported back to Australia (Everingham, Stafford-Bell and Hammarberg, 2014). The requirements for becoming a surrogate in Victoria are appropriately specific. Surrogates must be healthy, have already carried and delivered at least one child, must be at least 25 years old and usually under 40 (Victorian Assisted Reproductive Treatment Authority 2014). They must not be paid for their service and they must not use their own eggs, meaning all legal surrogate arrangements in Australia are gestational altruistic surrogacies.

There are many benefits to surrogacy, primarily that it allows people who can’t have families to seek an alternative parenting route. There are countless stories of people carrying children for their loved ones, or even for strangers they met online (Bears, 2014). Many accounts of middle class altruistic surrogacy explain that they relished the joy of blessing another family with a child, or that they wanted to experience pregnancy again, but had no desire to raise another child. In these cases, surrogacy appears to have no flaws. All parties are satisfied with the outcome and the child grows up in a loving and relatively uncomplicated family.

However, while it is difficult to gauge exactly how often all parties are entirely satisfied by the arrangement, it appears that a minority are this successful. Hundreds of surrogate children are born in developing countries, where the poverty rate is high and regulation is minimal. The two most often accessed by Australians are Thailand and India. They are carried by women living in poverty and are the genetic offspring of wealthy families in the US, the UK and Australia. The whole process could cost as little as US$10,000 in India, with the surrogate paid as little as US$2,500 (Kannan, 2009), compared with over AUS$100,000 in Australia—with none of this going toward the surrogate herself (Jefford, 2018). The United Nations Human Rights Council have expressed concerns about the practice of surrogacy, because they deem it a dangerous mindset to treat children as a commodity. Maud de Boer-Buquicchio reported to the UN in 2018 that, ‘[t]here is no right to have a child under international law’ (Ohcr.org, 2019). This means that people are not entitled to a child and therefore don’t have the right to obtain one by any means available to them, such as by exploiting the bodies of poor women.

The bond between the child and the mother, even those with no genetic relation, can be very strong. After growing a baby inside your body it can be incredibly difficult to say goodbye. Lindsay Curtis grappled with feelings of ‘grief’ and ‘maternal envy’, after being a surrogate for mother at the age of 22. She admitted that ‘I didn’t know it would break my heart’ (Curtis, 2018). Surrogate Mothers often experience post-natal depression exacerbated by the grief of losing the child. The majority continue to live in poverty, despite being paid the equivalent a few thousand Australian dollars. If the surrogate is pregnant with two or more babies, parents may ask her to get a selective abortion, something that isn’t always agreed upon (O’Reilly, 2016). In 2014, ‘Baby Gammy,’ a surrogate child born with downs-syndrome was left in Thailand with his surrogate mother, while his intended parents took his neuro-typical and able-bodied twin sister Pipah back to Australia. (Fenton-Glynn, C. 2019) The intended parents admitted that this was partially because they didn’t want to parent a child with a disability. The surrogate mother, Pattaramon Chanbua, wanted to parent both children, and resisted handing either of them over (Meade, 2014). She now lives in Australia as a citizen where her child can seek the medical treatment that he needs (Farrell, 2015).

Following this infamous case, Thailand banned non-citizens from arranging commercial surrogacies in 2015 (SBS News, 2015). In 2019, India outlawed commercial surrogacy altogether (Our Bureau, 2019, PRS India, 2019). While it is likely that a black market for surrogacy will persist, these policies should go some way to protect the exploitation of vulnerable women and increase the use of more ethically sound and legally explicit surrogacy agreements within Australia.

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