Ethical Effects Of Surrogacy

As societies grow economically, it is not surprising that money is involved in even a special event of the birth of a child. This is called surrogacy. It is not a new practice; it has been in place for centuries and was not formally recognized until the twentieth century. Surrogacy is the practice in which a family who is infertile and desperately wanting baby that carries their blood, pays a woman to carry the husband’s seed and give birth the baby. There are many ethical problems that arise from this process. There are two types of surrogacies: partial surrogacy and full surrogacy. Partial surrogacy is when the surrogate mother is also the genetic mother of the child, and the conception takes place by the artificial insemination of the commissioning …show more content…
First of all, the woman has to carry the baby for nine months, and then force herself to separate emotionally from the baby and move on with her life. The effects of this separation of would greatly affect her psychologically. Because of the financial crisis that the surrogate mother is in, she makes a decision that she is not fully aware of the consequences. No one can know ahead of time how much attached she can grow attached to the life that grows inside her womb for nine months. Even in the case that the surrogate mother already has a sense of detachment to the growing baby inside her womb, it is ethically immoral because she would be more prone to put herself and the baby at risk. In most cases, women cannot back out of a contract once they have agreed to give birth for the commissioning parents. As result, even if the woman were to have second thoughts and want to keep her baby, she would not be able to, and this would cause her much distress and damage her psychologically, having to give her child away for money. Second of all, there is also a problem that arises with the cheapening a person’s goal on self-respect. In most cases, when money involved in the exchanging of lives, there is the issue of self-respect called into question. There is no price that can be set for a life. However, with this process, a price has to be put on the life, no matter how much the commissioning parents pay the surrogate mother. The life …show more content…
To me, it is too heartless, and does not leave room for sentiment. If the surrogate mother were to choose the course of action that would seem to generate the most happiness to the most people, she would have to lay aside her sentiment and attachment to the child that was nurtured in her room for nine months. In addition, the happiness that is caused by the surrogate mother giving her child away to another family can be a temporary happiness. The child could have some genes that are not in the family that adopted her, and she would have issues with identifying herself, and feel out of place in her own family. In the case that the child does not have these problems growing up, she would eventually have to face the truth that her mother did not want to have her, and had decided to give her up at birth. Even if there was a perfect reason for giving up the child, the child would feel uncomfortable and would have to face the dilemma of which family to identify herself with – her surrogate mother’s family, or her adopted family. She would be placed in the middle of these two families, because of her mother’s decision. There is also the problem of commercializing the process that is unethical. As mentioned before in this paper, the price tag that is placed on the child’s head would not be something that the child would be able to easily forget. The child would have to deal with the fact that her surrogate