PubMed · 14628521
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Kevin P D Smith, Brady J Wood, John Woods. 2003. Aligning philosophy with practice.. https://doi.org/10.12927/hcq.2003.16484
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This article examines the ethics of egg donation. It begins by looking at objections to noncommercial gamete donation, and then takes up criticism of commercial egg donation. After discussing arguments based on concern for offspring, inequality, commodification, exploitation of donors, and threats to the family, I conclude that some payment to donors is ethically acceptable. Donors should not be paid for their eggs, but rather they should be compensated for the burdens of egg retrieval. Making the distinction between compensation for burdens and payment for a product has the advantages of limiting payment, not distinguishing between donors on the basis of their traits, and ensuring that donors are paid regardless of the number or quality of eggs retrieved.
A "surrogate mother" is a woman who, for financial or other reasons, agrees to bear a child for another woman who is incapable to conceive herself. In other words, she is a "substitute mother" that conceives, gestates and delivers a baby on behalf of another woman who is subsequently to be seen as the "real" (social and legal) mother of the child. Though the practice of surrogacy has already become a big market in western countries, it has also generated countless challenges for the law because it adds a third dimension to the meaning of motherhood. Like adoption, surrogacy separates the role of rearing mother from what the law has called the natural mother, but gestational surrogacy breaks the latter down into the roles of genetic mother and birth mother, leaving two women with biological connections to the child. Because surrogacy tends to commodify and dehumanize people, and because of all its legal, social, and psychological complications, it is obviously not wise to accept surrogacy as an alternative way of procreation.
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