An increasing number of well off Western couples are renting wombs of poor women in India to gestate their children. From the story:
One leading obstetrician at a Mumbai hospital says she delivers on average one baby to a British couple every 48 hours. One London couple who have taken advantage of India’s “baby factories” told the Standard of their joy at having twins. Louis and Freya are the genetic offspring of Chris and Susan Morrison but were
It is very disturbing to see well off Westerners with such a sense of entitlement that they think it is perfectly fine to use poor women as so many brood mares. And what about the well being of the birth mothers? What psychic cost do they pay to gestate children and then have them taken away, never to be seen again–perhaps never to be ever known about by the children they bore? And what if something went wrong and the surrogate lost her health, her fecundity, or her life? Or what if the baby was born with a disability and the parents “change their minds?” There is a lot more involved here than the joy of the parents.
Back to the story:
The case will inevitably raise questions over the relative ease with which childless couples can go to India to have surrogate babies — and could also put pressure on British authorities to relax laws which outlaw commercial surrogacy. Today’s case also raises the prospect of wealthy women, who do not wish to go through the inconvenience or pain of childbirth, travelling to India to have their eggs implanted in the wombs of Indian women.
The “outsourcing of ethics” (to borrow Bill Hurlbut’s evocative term) we increasingly see employed across a wide swath of bioethical fronts should become the subjects of legislative correctives. We properly bar unethical activities at home, but what good is that when we wink at the well off going overseas to get whatever they want–babies (gestated and otherwise, hello, Madonna), eggs, organs, subjects for human research, sex, etc.–as if the people being exploited don’t matter as much as our own countrymen and women.
If it was wrong to exploit poor countries for their natural resources during the days of imperialism, why isn’t it even more wrong to exploit poor people today for their body parts and functions? And is it any coincidence that the UK, which is leading the world in promoting Brave New World attitudes and technologies, is leading the world in this new form of “colonialism?”
June 14th, 2009 | 12:08 am
Test comment. If this works, you should get an email notification saying this comment is in the system.
June 14th, 2009 | 6:41 pm
Is it just me, or does selfishness seem to be on the rise in modern society? Between this and “Larry’s Kidney” (ugh) I see people exploiting other human beings in faraway countries and not seeing anything wrong with it. I know this sort of thing happened in the past, but why are people now getting interviewed and writing books about it? What changed?
The most troubling part for me is that the response seems to be that the response from these people is so often “you’d do it, too!” Sometimes I wonder if they’re right. Is there anything people just *won’t do* anymore because it’s *wrong*?
June 14th, 2009 | 9:01 pm
I have mixed feelings on this one. Yes, I agree that women should not be in circumstances in which they may feel coerced into carrying children for other couples in order to make money. The possibility of exploitation is why we don’t allow organs to be bought and sold, either. On the other hand, I don’t think that Madonna adopting a child from Africa is necessarily reflective of selfishness, and since surrogacy isn’t a bad thing in itself, this practice doesn’t upset me as much as testing drugs, etc, on people in other countries.
June 14th, 2009 | 9:41 pm
SafePres: Except, as I understand it, the child has a father who wants to raise her.
June 15th, 2009 | 12:49 am
in Madonna’s case, you mean? Then, of course, the child should remain with her biological father. Moreover, the birth parent should retain rights as long as he or she is alive and able to care for the child….such adoptions are supposed to be illegal.
June 15th, 2009 | 1:00 am
SafePres: Yes. I am not against adopting orphans from Africa or elsewhere. But the father is begging to keep his daughter. The lower court refused the adoption, but at the top, it appears money and celebrity talked. Hit the link in the post.
June 16th, 2009 | 11:19 pm
Wesley. That’s HORRIBLE. I hope that the father finds some way of overturning this…that’s just cruel. Moreover, it is such a sad reflection on a process that is supposed to help children and families, both birth and adoptive. I have a special place in my heart for adoption because I am adopted. This kind of abuse grieves me. It also makes me angry that no news outlet that I watched reported that the girl had a father who wanted her when reporting the story. The only thing I heard was that Madonna wanted to adopt another child and that the court initially said no. A very sad situation.
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