Vector Volume 11 Issue 2 - 2017

Commercial surrogacy in Australia:
the benefits of harm minimization
through legalisation
[Feature Article]
Emily Feng-Gu and Keyur Doolabh
Emily is an enthusiastic fourth year medical student at Monash University. She is completing
a Diploma of Liberal Arts (Philosophy), and hopes to complete a Bachelor of Medical
Science next year in her area of interest: bioethics. In her spare moments, she can be found
with a coffee in one hand and a book in the other.
Keyur is a medical student with an interest in philosophy. He enjoys writing, and is particularly
interested in poverty, climate change and animal welfare.
Surrogate /sʌrəɡət/
A substitute, or someone or something that
represents another person or thing in their
stead.[1]
The status quo
There is much controversy around surrogacy
in Australia. We have what is known as ‘altruistic
surrogacy,’ whereby a woman cannot be compensated
beyond reasonable expenses for gestating a baby
intended for someone else. Even the name puts our
moral intuitions at ease. Altruistic. Contrast this with
the term ‘commercial surrogacy’, which makes many
of us instinctively recoil. So what is it about commercial
surrogacy, where a woman is paid to gestate a baby, that
we take issue with?
The most common type of surrogacy is gestational
surrogacy, wherein the commissioning parent(s)
uses IVF to create an embryo from their own or donor
gametes and transfer it into the uterus of the gestational
surrogate. With this method, the surrogate mother does
not provide any genetic material. People that seek out
surrogacy commonly include infertile heterosexual
couples and homosexual couples desiring children of
their own. The demand for surrogacy has heightened in
recent years following changes to child protection policy,
which lead to drastic falls in the number of children for
adoption and stricter criteria implemented by overseas
countries regarding the age and family types who
can adopt. For example, none of Australia’s current
international adoption agreements allow same-sex
couples to adopt.[2] The status quo in Australia (except
the Northern Territory) only allows altruistic surrogacy,
where one must not compensate the surrogate mother
beyond out-of-pocket expenses like medical cost, travel,
and time off work. The options are further limited by the
fact that surrogacy is illegal for single people and samesex
couples in certain states like Western Australia and
South Australia. The increasing number of roadblocks
to accessing surrogacy has left many desperate
couples resorting to offshore commercial surrogacy.
But even this option is becoming more restricted now
that Thailand, Cambodia, India, and Nepal have banned
foreigners from commercial surrogacy following the
notorious “Gammy scandal” in 2014.[3]
Objections to commercial surrogacy
Commercial surrogacy commonly encounters several
types of objections. Some think it is inescapably a form
of exploitation of women, reducing the surrogate to her
base reproductive capability, and effectively turning her
into a walking incubator. Certainly, the idea of a class
of ‘breeders’ is eerily reminiscent of Margaret Atwood’s
classic novel The Handmaid’s Tale, which could be
interpreted as a cautionary tale warning against the
harms of surrogacy. In a similar vein, some argue that
pregnancy belongs in a special moral realm, and that by
bringing market forces into the arena we degrade the
intrinsic value of creating life. Maybe there are some
things in life which simply should not come with a price
tag.
Certainly, the idea of a class
of ‘breeders’ is eerily reminiscent
of Margaret Atwood’s classic
novel The Handmaid’s Tale
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