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Corruption In Surrogacy

The purpose of this article is to identify the problems with commodifying women's reproductive labour to be bought and sold in the market. In other words, how does the market use surrogacy to corrupt humans' attitudes towards women's bodies? Using Sandel as the primary reference, in conjunction with Debra Staz, and Elizabeth S. Anderson, this article will cover the use of surrogacy in the market and the influence of commodifying such item.

Corruption

For Michael J. Sandel, corruption is when we value lower-order goods the same way as high order goods. In other words, corruption is how markets improperly set a value on goods. Sandel argues that allowing the market to set a price on certain moral or civic goods can degrade or corrupt this good.

Surrogacy

Surrogacy involves a reproductive model, where a woman carries a pregnancy to term on behalf of another woman or couple who are unable to. Due to abnormalities like ovulation problem, blocked fallopian tubes or uterine condition. Surrogacy works in two ways, first through insemination of the father’s sperm into the woman. Second, is Vitro fertilization which is getting sperm from a man and woman then fertilize it. After that, placing the embryo into the uterus of the surrogate woman, then she carries the baby until birth. The surrogate mother will not have any genetic ties to the child because her egg is not used. Clarification of legal standing between the surrogate mother, also known as gestational mother, is done through a contract. The surrogate and intended parents agree to enter a contract to stipulate each other’s obligation and rights. Including payments from the intended parent to the gestational mother. The contract also indicates conditions for the surrogate to abide by during pregnancy.

Models of Surrogacy

Altruistic model and Commercial model

Altruistic surrogacy refers to those agreements where the surrogate does not get compensated or paid for carrying a baby to term. The intended parent covers only reasonable expenses such as incurred as a result of the surrogacy. Altruistic surrogates act from care and concerns for the intended family. Occasionally, related through friendship, kinship or act of kindness. A person who acts altruistically or as an altruistic surrogate expects no reciprocates or external reward. Some scholars deem altruistic surrogacy morally acceptable since it is based on a gift relationship and voluntary. However, it gives rise to various questions that should cautiously advocate.

Commercial surrogacy Includes a payment compensation as a contractual agreement between intended parents and surrogates. If Mrs. Brown is infertile and Mrs.Orange decides to provide an ova to get fertilized with Mr. Browns' sperm. The gametes later get transferred to Mrs. Red, who agrees to carry the baby to term. Who then hands the child over to Mr. & Mrs. Brown after birth. However, this creates a complicated case of whom the baby belongs.

Staff Sgt. Grace Hoyt, 341st Missile Wing chaplain assistant, prepares to give birth to her surrogate baby with her husband, Austin, and the baby’s mother Gabby by her side Nov. 9, 2017, at Benfis Health System, Great Falls, Mont. Hoyt was a surrogate for Gabby and Rex Baird and delivered their baby with them by her side."

Michael Sandel

Corruption in Surrogacy

For Sandel, his notion of corruption is selling something that should not belong to the market initially. Such goods that become commodified by the market as a means of exchange, it is thereby corrupted since it is not valued appropriately.  In his book Justice Sandel agree that market exchange should be fair and consensual; however, we should not only look at that as the premises of surrogacy being in the market. The exchange of commodity damages and devalues our attitude towards that good. Additionally, such a market corrodes our attitude towards what we value, as the market tends to crowd out non-market norms. For example, the market can encourage us to view our body as a piece of property from which we can profit from it. The market aims to normalize and neutralize commodities to avoid a threshold or cap in the market. However, the market can never be neutral because it aims to promote certain norms, thus allows for the corrupting of the values that we attach to those goods. In other words, the market tells individuals how things should be valued.

Baby M case (1985)

Sandel uses Mary Beth Whitehead's case in his book Justice to show how surrogacy falls short when it comes to consent, transparency, and value of higher goods. The case is about Mary Beth who responded to an agency seeking advertisement of a need for a surrogate mother in exchange for monetary payment. Mary Beth agreed to be inseminated with the couple's sperm and to give up her parental right when the time comes. Mary Beth received a fee of $10,000 and the agency received $7,500 for there services. However, when the time came to give up the baby to the couples, Mary Beth decided that she wants to keep the child and could not part with the child. She fled to Florida with the baby, but the couple took the case to court.

In the first trial, Judge Sorkow addresses three objections to the case. First, he states that a deal was a deal, and Mary Beth Whitehead had no right to break the deal because she changed her mind. He argued that neither party had higher power than the other. Thus they both get something in return; Mary Beth gets 10,000, and the Sterns get the child without any coercion involved. Secondly, Sorkow states that surrogacy does not amount to baby selling. In this case, the baby was William Stern's "biological genetically related" to him. Therefore, William is not buying what he already owns. Third, Sorkow declares that the payment was for Whitehead's service (caring for the baby to term) and not the product. Furthermore, it addresses the notion that such an event does not exploit women because it is like paid sperm donation. For example, if a man is allowed to sell his sperm, then women should be allowed to do the same. In summary, Judge Sorkow awarded the child to the Sterns, stating, they would do a better job at raising the child.

In the second trial, MaryBeth Whitehead appealed to the New Jersey Suprerior court, where they ruled the contract invalid, however, agreed that the Sterns would do a better job at raising the child. However, the court concluded that Mary Beth Whitehead being the child's mother stands. Chief Justice Robert Wilentz argued that the contract was not fully informed. He argued that a mother has an unchangeable bond with her child and any decision made before the baby's birth is uninformed. Also, poor and working-class women are more likely to become surrogate mothers for money. Therefore, suggesting that money plays a role factor in the decision making of Whitehead. Thirdly, putting the need for money aside, the judge argued that money aside, consent was irrelevant since, in a civilized society, there are things money cannot buy.  Therefore, baby-selling is wrong regardless of how voluntary it might be.

In conclusion, Sandel argues in his book What Money Can't Buy: the moral limits of market. First, it is wrong to treat a human being as a commodity that could be bought and sold because humans are a person worthy of respect. Using Anderson, Sandel states that surrogacy degrades children and women's labour, as previously mentioned. Anderson uses the word degradation to describe the use of women's reproductive system as a "lower mode of valuation." We have to love and respect women's reproductive labour rather than use it as a mere commercial surrogate that degrades children because it treats them as a commodity.

Debra Satz

Essentialist

According to Debra Satz, on the essentialist thesis, reproductive labour should not be a commodity for the market to purchase or sell. Surrogacy is not just a subjective topic, and not all goods should exist in the market to commodify women's' labour in particular. The market of surrogacy encourages women to treat their labour as a commercial production, which violates emotional ties that the mother has the right. Furthermore, there is a proper attitude woman should have for their body and reproductive system. Reproductive labour is fundamentally different from labour in general. The reason for that is that first, women's reproductive labour have a genetic connection with the producer and the product. Second, general labour is voluntary, while the phases in the reproductive process are involuntary. Such as ovulation, conception, and the birth of the child without the mother's conscious direction. Third other labour does not require the necessity of a long period of time, while pregnancy requires up to nine months necessity and not an option. Fourth, reproductive labour requires restrictions on certain things and the behaviour of the mother.

In conclusion, essentialist would say surrogacy is not just subjective. However, there have to be proper attitude women should have for their body and reproductive system. If women do not have that type of attitude towards their bodies and only see their body as a piece of apparatus, they can sell for surrogacy purposes; they have the wrong attitude for their bodies.

Elizabeth S. Anderson

Commodities are things we properly treat in line with the norms of the modern market. Therefore commercial surrogacy raises and ethical issue since it indicates the intervention of the market into the new sphere of conduct, which is women's reproductive labour. Anderson, states commercial surrogacy as degrading to the child since they are treated lower than the value they have. In other words, children should not be valued as a mere object to use for the market for purchase and sale. We should not value things as more or less but in qualitatively higher and lower ways. For example, to love and respect people is valuing them in a higher way compared to if they were used as a mere means to an end.

By participating in the sale of an infant, all participant's attitude towards children is therefore tainted since surrogacy express a form of attitude towards children that values them lower and reducing the monetary incentive of a mother and child. Therefore, Anderson states that the unsold children of the surrogate are also harmed by commercial surrogacy since they fear being sold like their half-siblings.

See Also

Surrogacy In India

2014 Thai surrogacy controversy

Baby M