Volume 2, February 2002
www.psljournal.com/archives/papers/comsur_williamsjones.cfm
Commercial Surrogacy and the
Redefinition of Motherhood
Bryn
Williams-Jones*
* Graduate
Research Associate and Ph.D. Candidate, Centre for Applied Ethics, University
of British Columbia
1. Introduction
Since the
1970s, there has been rapid and wide ranging development in the field of new
reproductive technologies (NRT). With donor insemination (DI) and in vitro fertilization (IVF), previously
infertile couples have been given new hope and the chance to have children. A
more recent addition to these new methods of reproduction has been the
combination of DI and IVF with surrogate mother arrangements.[1]
This technique has subtly changed the realm of reproduction, for with the
addition of a third party (the surrogate) to the reproductive environment, the
nature of motherhood, fatherhood, and the allocation of parental rights and
duties has come into question.
Before
the advent of NRTs, there were essentially two forms of motherhood recognized
in Western society, the biological and the social mother. Except for adoption,
fostering, or step parenting, the biological mother was assumed to also be the
social mother. This is not surprising, as motherhood has never been ambiguous;
one might not know who one’s father was, but one’s mother’s identity was rarely
in question. However, before women were granted legal personhood (1929 in
Canada), a child’s legal guardian or parent was the father (based on property
rights arguments); historically, illegitimate children were not considered to
have a legal parent, either mother or father.
The use
of IVF and DI in conjunction with surrogacy arrangements, raise a number of
important social, legal, and ethical issues. Much of the discussion of
commercial surrogacy turns around key legal cases, such as Baby M[2] or Johnson v. Calvert[3],
or explores feminist arguments for or against the practice of surrogacy. In
this paper, however, I propose to draw upon legal, anthropological, and
feminist literature to see how commercial surrogacy has changed the way we
construct motherhood, and to better address the ethical issues at the core of
the debate. For example, is the surrogate simply a ‘womb for rent’ who has no
interests in the child she carries, or does the fact that she carries and gives
birth to the child make her a mother with legitimate parental rights? Is there
a moral difference between a genetic and a gestational surrogate? Does commercial (as opposed to altruistic)
surrogacy essentialise a woman to her reproductive capacity and lead to
commodification and exploitation? In other words, has commercial surrogacy
changed the traditional Western understanding of motherhood and does it do an
injustice to the surrogate, the contracting mother, and/or women in general? I
will argue that the fragmentation of the legal concept of ‘mother’ has created
a range of social and ethical problems that need to be addressed; nevertheless,
the basic societal definition of ‘motherhood’ remains substantially unchanged.
2. Kinship, Nature, and Procreation
To gain a
clear understanding of how motherhood has been traditionally defined in the
West, it is first necessary to explore conceptions of kinship. In the Western
context, we tend to divide kin into either blood or marriage relations, though
with the changing social dynamic of modern families, individuals who are
related neither through biology nor marriage may come to be seen as part of the
family, e.g., children who are adopted or conceived through donor insemination,
gay and lesbian families, etc.[4]
In general, current Western conceptions of the family still see biological
relatedness as primary and prior to the social construction of relations. These
‘natural’ facts are often taken for granted in discussions of kinship and
family, and people may give special consideration (or have obligations) to blood
relatives, because “blood is thicker than water.”[5]
The
importance placed on biological connection is further exemplified by
traditional understandings of procreation and the resulting cultural
definitions of ‘mother’ and ‘father’. The doctrine of “one child, one genitor”
has been a part of Western tradition for more than two thousand years. While
there are many historical antecedents to the modern view of conception
(Aristotelian and ancient Greek atomistic views), it has only been in the last
hundred years or so that the mechanisms of conception and fertilization have
been fully explained by the biological sciences. The procreative act and the
general connection between mother, father, and child was likely well
understood, but until relatively recently the uniqueness of biological
paternity (as opposed to the obviousness of maternity) has been a cultural
construct based on little scientific evidence.[6]
2.1 The Impact of New Reproductive Technologies
With
their rootedness in social relations of natural fact, traditional notions of
kinship made the kin relations essentially non-negotiable, and the givenness of
the relation was symbolized by the blood tie. One could not choose one’s
parents or one’s relatives, and this led to one having certain unavoidable kin
obligations. However, with an increased emphasis on autonomy and freedom of
choice, we may encounter or participate in new and unconventional kin
relations.[7]
Traditional notions of parenthood that presumed a relationship between family
members are being challenged by a more biological view that emphasizes genetic
relatedness and questions the quality of social relations. With technologies
such as IVF and DI, children may be born from the product of donor sperm or
ova, in which case they may be genetically related to only one (or possibly
neither) of their social parents.[8]
The transmission of the genetic substances is seen to confer identity on the
child, thus on becoming self-conscious, the child may assert a right to know
about his or her genetic identity and biological parents. This situation raises
the question of what it means to be a parent and who can be said to fit this
role.
In the
West, the child is seen as an independent and autonomously produced individual,
the result of biological processes. It depends for its initial existence on its
parents, but exists as a separate being from birth onwards; Canadian law makes
explicit the difference between a fetus and a child. But parents only come into
being through the existence of their children. People are not presumed to be
parents, either socially or legally, without the known existence of children.
Parenthood is always constructed while childhood is a given. The parent
constructs the child biologically, while the child constructs the parent socially.
The mother (and her identity) is constituted through her relationship to her
child. The father is constituted through his relation to the mother and
participation in the mother-child relationship; marriage assesses putative
parenthood to the father.[9]
The legal system is currently faced
with the challenge of defining ‘motherhood’ and the various relations
contingent in conception and pregnancy. There can now be multiple actors in the
reproductive process who may have or desire recognized social roles, regardless
of their biological ones. For example, under British law, the women who carries
the child is considered the mother, whether or not the child is genetically
linked to her. Furthermore, the husband of the woman who gestates the child is
considered the child’s father, regardless of genetic link to the child.[10]
The intention to treat a person as mother is a social construction which may
contrast with the natural facts. “In the past, the natural facts that define a
mother always seemed more comprehensive than those defining her partner. She
both donated genetic material and brought the child to term, elements combined
in the former cultural assumption that childbirth was a supreme natural fact of
life.”[11]
The gestation period has now become culturally ambiguous.
3. Surrogate Mothers
Assisted reproduction has contributed to the fragmentation of
motherhood. Historically, the social and biological aspects of motherhood
resided in one person. Maternity is now divisible into genetic, gestational,
and social motherhood, and these roles can be spread amongst a number of women.
This division is most apparent in the case of surrogate mothers, where at least
three (and possibly as many as five) women can attempt to claim parental rights
over a child. “If Mrs. A is infertile and Mrs. B agrees to provide ova to be
fertilized in vitro with semen from Mr. A, and embryos are transferred to Mrs.
C, who agrees to carry the baby to term and hand it over to Mrs. A and her
husband after birth, the situation becomes extremely complex and the basic
tenets of family law uncertain.”[12]
This situation creates the potential for enormous conflict over who
should be considered the ‘mother’ and have the concomitant parental rights and
responsibilities for the child. For example, in the Baby M case, there was a conflict between two conceptions of
‘motherhood’, the legal (commissioning mother) and the biological (surrogate
mother). Surrogacy breaks down and devolves the role of mother, separating the
social and nurturing part of motherhood from the genetic contribution and the
birthing process.
3.1 Motivations and Methods
If
surrogacy fragments our understanding of motherhood and creates the potential
for social and legal conflict, what then motivates women to become surrogate
mothers? In a study of established surrogacy programs in the U.S., 28
surrogates from six different programs were interviewed. A striking revelation
was the almost unanimous feelings expressed about the influence of remuneration
in decisions to become surrogate mothers. Most surrogates interviewed stated
categorically that they were not doing it for the money; altruism was the
primary motivation and remuneration was simply compensation for family work –
surrogates were paid $10,000 to $15,000, an amount held artificially low to
screen out women motivated solely by the lure of financial gain. Surrogates did
not spend the money on themselves alone, but usually on their other children,
home improvement, etc., and surrogacy was viewed as a part-time job that would
allow a women to stay home with her children.[13]
The
surrogates interviewed also felt that the remuneration they received was
insufficient compensation for nine months of pregnancy. This view may in part
be an example of the cultural belief that children are priceless – the child
produced is conceived of as a gift, a view that reinforces the idea that having
a child for someone is beyond monetary compensation. Ragoné argues that in the
U.S., remuneration is devalued by surrogates as a means of maintaining an acceptable
balance between reproduction and work. If it is work, it should be compensated,
but because it is also reproduction, it must be done out of ‘love’ rather than
for ‘money’. Thus, surrogates attempted to balance public and private views of
‘motherhood’ – many of the women interviewed became surrogates to “transcend
the limitations of their domestic roles as wives, mothers, and homemakers while
concomitantly attesting to the importance of those roles and to the
satisfaction they derived from them.”[14]
Remuneration is the most problematic aspect of surrogacy because it challenges
the cultural ideals of women and mothers as selfless nurturers; admitting that
remuneration was adequate would eliminate the ability of the women to classify
their work as an altruistic “gift of life” to an infertile couple.
At a practical level, surrogates have to be able to strongly
disassociate themselves from the children they bear. In a study by Snowdon, she
notes that some women found it harder giving away children that were genetically
linked to themselves: “Giving away a child that is half mine–I brainwashed
myself so much that I never thought about it, but at the end of the day you are
still giving away something that belongs to you, your flesh and blood.”[15] Two women interviewed opted for IVF and
gestational surrogacy because they felt that the baby then belonged more to the
contracting couple, and it was easier for the surrogates to think of themselves
simply as carriers or incubators. This attitude of distance or separation was
used as a mechanism to help a woman part with the child at birth. As one woman
observed,
With your own children it is totally
different. It is a joyous occasion where you share everything with your husband
and your family. With surrogate pregnancy you almost cut out the family. You
don’t encourage the grandmother to be a grandma, and you don’t start nest
building and buying things for the baby. There is no comparison between the
pregnancies, except that you are pregnant, only the physical symptoms.[16]
Snowdon
did not see the fragmentation of ‘motherhood’ as causing any difficulties with
the women she interviewed. The consensus was that the social mother, the woman
who raised the child, was the true mother. The surrogates interviewed placed a
great deal of emphasis on nurturing as the fundamental aspect of motherhood.
With ‘motherhood’ now defined as separable into the roles of nurturer (social)
mother and biological mother, women are given a choice about motherhood. Either
role can be accepted or refused, thus in deciding not to be the social
nurturing mother, the value of the biological (surrogate’s) contribution is
minimized “while the adoptive mother’s choice to nurture activates or fully
brings forth motherhood.”[17]
Adopted mothers attempt to resolve the lack of biological or genetic
relationship with their children through what Ragoné calls “mythic conception”
– the idea that the desire and intent to have a child is what makes surrogacy
possible. Some adoptive mothers also experienced the pregnancy by proxy: they
followed the surrogate through medical exams, birthing classes, and through the
delivery of the child – the adoptive mother was “emotionally pregnant” while
the surrogate was only “physically pregnant.”[18]
3.2 Genetics and the Essentialization of Women
Motherhood has been widely portrayed
in North America as one of the core aspects of a woman’s life, without which
her life is considered incomplete.[19]
We hear discussion about infertility treatments, techniques of in vitro fertilization, etc., where
these technologies are presented as almost a panacea that can make infertile
couples whole, functioning, normal. However, these procedures do not solve the
problem of infertility – they are simply methods of providing childless couples
with access to the fertility and childbearing abilities of others.[20]
These technologies also provide contracting mothers with the opportunity to
have a child that is genetically ‘theirs,’ particularly in the case of
gestational surrogacy.[21]
Some
feminists argue that legalizing surrogacy would help liberate women by
de-biologizing motherhood. Women could become mothers without having to go
through pregnancy and birth. On the other hand, it is argued, especially by
religious and conservative opponents, that surrogacy violates a natural
maternal instinct and bonding thereby undermining the structure of the nuclear
family. Even some former surrogates, such as Mary Beth Whitehead, invoke the
language of maternal instinct and essentialized motherhood, instead of
feminism, to oppose surrogacy.[22]
Raymond rejects the essentialist argument of maternal bonding and
maternal instinct as a tool for opposing surrogacy, as she believes these
arguments have little legal weight in opposition to a father’s right to the
child. In the market, the surrogate is often not considered to be contributing
to the pregnancy, aside from donating an egg and gestating the fetus; the real
value comes from the donor sperm.[23]
For example, in the Johnson v. Calvert
case, the California Superior court awarded custody of the child to the
commissioning couple, the Calverts, because they were the providers of the
gametes which formed the embryo and produced the child. Genetic contribution
was the primary criterion of parenthood; the role of the gestational mother was
reduced to that of an incubator.
This view ties in well with the traditional Western understanding of
procreation described above, that sees the man as providing ‘the seed’ and
women as simply incubating the child and being ‘the soil’ from which the seed can
grow. The egg only acquires the status of the sperm, as important contributor,
when it does not conflict with the rights of the man. In Johnson v. Calvert, the sperm and egg came from a married couple
and were thought to be working in co-operation to arrive at a commonly desired
goal. When the egg is from a woman who decides she wants to keep the resulting
child, e.g., Mary Beth Whitehead, the egg is then reduced in meaning and the
sperm is said to predominate in importance of contribution.[24]
Genetics
has often been treated as determinative in the assignation of parental rights,
because it is believed that genes are what give children their individual and
unique traits, characteristics, and helps to form their identities. Gestational
surrogate mothers may thus be considered not to be contributing anything
physical to fetal development, aside from care and feeding. It is argued, as in
Johnson v. Calvert, that the
surrogate makes no contribution to the physical features, behavior, etc., of
the child and therefore has no justification to argue for parental rights over
the child.[25] However,
this view is far from unanimous in the U.S. or internationally. For example,
the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) maintains that
gestation, and not genetics, determines motherhood.
In other
words, the ACOG makes no distinction between the usual forms of surrogate
parenting and gestational surrogate parenting. This follows the position of the
Warnock Report in the U.K., which argued that egg or embryo donation is treated
as an absolute separation that does not confer any parental rights to the
donor. If a couple donates an embryo to a gestational surrogate, the surrogate
becomes the legal recipient of the embryo, and the legal mother and parent of the
child when it is born. The surrogate thus has the choice of honoring the
contract and transferring parental rights to the commissioning couple, or
deciding to break the contract and keep the child for herself.[26]
The
positions taken by the ACOG and the Warnock Committee are based on a positive
valuation of the contribution that a mother makes during conception, gestation,
and birth. It is argued that nine months of labor and the process of giving
birth constitute a major investment of a woman’s time and effort towards the
child’s well-being. Furthermore, recent work in prenatal psychology and
physiology have demonstrated that the maternal environment can have a positive
or negative impact on the developing fetus, depending on the mother’s sense of
well-being, whether she is prepared for and wants the child, etc. For example,
referring to studies by Lester Sontag, Rae states that there is some evidence
that women undergoing severe emotional stress give birth to children who are
more irritable.[27] These types
of studies help demonstrate that the gestational contribution of mothers is far
more dynamic and relational than simply being “fetus sitters” or carriers of
the child.
However, by arguing for this type of maternal contribution and
connection to the fetus, Raymond worries that this may further contribute to
what she calls a “creeping maternal essentialism” in the debate over surrogacy.
Feminists advocating for surrogacy are concerned that prohibiting this
arrangement will biologize motherhood and entrench it in an understanding of
female nature. Yet, according to Raymond, where the real essentialism lies is
the assumption that women have a desperate need to have children and remain
fertile: “maternal essentialism confines women to the ghetto of motherhood.”[28]
To argue that maternal instinct and bonding is paramount is to reduce
motherhood to biology; instead, Raymond maintains that motherhood is primarily
a relationship that exists within a social, political and historical context,
thus it cannot be reduced to an unchanging basic instinct. In becoming
pregnant, a women forms both a personal and social relationship with the fetus
she bears. This relationship may be positive or negative, depending on the
circumstances of the pregnancy, whether the mother feels forced or coerced, or
is unprepared to deal with having a child at a given point in time.
4. Commercialization and Exploitation
While surrogacy in general raises a host of social and ethical problems,
I believe that commercial surrogacy in particular can crystallize the
difficulties that many people have with surrogacy, and help us get to the core
of how surrogacy affects our understanding of motherhood. Commercialization,
and its use of market rhetoric, treats surrogacy as a service arrangement
between a number of individuals, leading to the creation of a product and the
transfer of rights to that product. In the law in the U.S., this is represented
in the form of contracts signed by the commissioning couple and the surrogate
mother. In exchange for between $10,000 and $15,000, the surrogate mother (and
usually her partner) agree to abstain from intercourse for a number of months,
submit to regular and extensive medical exams, and agree to transfer parental
rights to the couple once the child is born.
4.1 Contracts and Baby-Selling
As noted
above, many women adapt well to surrogacy and are able to distance themselves
from the pregnancy and the fetus. To create such distance, they must be able to
alienate themselves – the worker – from the child, literally and figuratively
the product of labor. These women must also deal with a cultural construct of
motherhood that sees it as something private, and not to be commercialized.
Thus, commercial surrogates have the uneasy task of, on the one hand, feeling
they are due remuneration for their services, while on the other, downplaying
the role of remuneration in favor of gift giving and altruism so that they can
maintain their place within the social context of motherhood.[29]
They are often torn between wanting to be respected for providing a valuable
service while at the same time embodying the nurturing and caring roles that
are still commonly assigned to mothers.
According to Rothman, this means
that “the baby like any other commodity does not belong to the producer but to
the purchaser.”[30] However,
instead of an assembly line model of production, a more accurate analogy might
be the work of a commissioned specialty craftsperson who creates something
which they own, but then decides to put that product up for sale. In most legal
jurisdictions, the child is considered to belong to the surrogate (although
this is less clear in the case of gestational surrogacy), and she must then
transfer her parental rights to the child for the contract to be completed; but
the surrogate retains the option of breaking the contract and keeping the
child. Nonetheless, there is still the sense that a product, the child, is
being produced for the specific purpose of being transferred and sold to the
commissioning couple.
Market
rhetoric collapses the natural properties of the product into culturally
defined qualities, making them one with the object being presented for social
consumption; the market analogy tends to also collapse all other concepts or
metaphors into market rhetoric, e.g., “products of conception” or the
“fertility industry”. The focus is not on motherhood or fatherhood, but on the
creation of children. Issues of money, cost of treatment and services, and so
forth are always present in the background in discussions of reproductive
technologies. The commodification of reproduction is clearly seen in the
development of surrogate motherhood – services are bought and body parts rented
as if the woman in which these parts reside did not exist.
This
sense that women are being treated simply as means of producing babies, and not
as individuals, is highlighted by the nature of many of the commercial
surrogacy arrangements. To begin with, much of the commercial surrogacy in the
U.S. is processed through surrogacy centers or “baby brokers”. Classified adds
appear in the newspaper and on the Internet[31]
seeking surrogate mothers, and offering $10,000 to $15,000 plus expenses; the
brokers, however, charge contracting couples between $30,000 and $45,000 per
child. Surrogacy agreements often have clauses in the contracts stipulating
that the surrogate must undergo frequent medical examinations, tests, and
amniocentesis, must follow detailed nutritional guidance, and limit consumption
of certain products, such as cigarettes or alcohol which may endanger the
fetus. Some agreements even include a statement that the surrogate will agree
to abort the fetus on demand if or when the commissioning couple decides to
terminate the surrogate’s service. Contracts provide only limited compensation
up front, with the bulk of the fee being provided not at the birth of the
child, but after the transfer of parental rights from the surrogate to the
commissioning couple. As Kimbrell notes, “no product, no payment.”[32]
When this arrangement is treated
purely as a contract, it cannot help but be the case that the surrogate is
being compensated for both her services and the delivery of a product, namely
the baby. The baby is separated from the birth mother in a commercial
transaction, which treats the baby as little more than a commodity. What then,
is the difference between this form of baby selling and illegal forms of baby
selling through adoption on the black market? Proponents of commercial
surrogacy would likely argue that the woman is being paid for her services only,
and the remuneration is simply due compensation for time and effort provided
during pregnancy.[33] This
argument is unconvincing, especially when it is commonly the case that the
surrogate only receives full payment for her services after signing over parental
rights to the child. There can be little doubt that what is being purchased is
not the surrogate’s services to help a couple produce a child; instead the
child itself is the product purchased.
4.2 Exploitation and Third World Mothers
One of the primary concerns about commercial surrogacy is the very real
potential for exploitation and coercion. Surrogacy does not, however, have to
be commercial to be coercive. In situations where a couple is infertile, there
may be intense family pressure upon a female sibling to become a surrogate to
provide a child for the couple. Moreover, this pressure may not be overt, but
might manifest itself through feelings of guilt or through strong family
opinion, so that the potential surrogate sees no other means of remedying the
situation for the infertile couple. Whether or not surrogacy is commercialized,
when set within the context of women’s inequality, it inevitably supports and
reinforces the view that bearing and raising children is what being a woman is
all about.[34]
When
large sums of money are involved, there is a greater likelihood that
unscrupulous individuals will seek to exploit others in order to make a profit.
For example, in the U.S., there have been at least 55 lawsuits and complaints
filed against brokers because of abuse and intimidation. To ensure the
effective transfer of the produced child to the commissioning couple,
surrogates must sign contracts that, as some have argued, amount to little more
than commercial servitude.[35]
When sperm, eggs, embryos, and even women’s reproductive processes are seen as
marketable, it raises concern for many that a ‘breeder class’ of women will
develop, women whose only means of making a living is by renting their bodies
and selling their body parts. This is especially true where there exists a
power and financial differential between those procuring and those providing
services.
Citing a
1988 study by the former U.S. Office of Technology Assessment, Kimbrell asserts
that most commissioning couples tend to be well-off, well educated, and with
incomes in excess of $50,000.[36] By contrast, “most surrogate mothers earn
just above the poverty line, and less than 4 percent of surrogate mothers are
reported to have received graduate school education. Over 40 percent of
surrogates are unemployed, receiving financial assistance, or both.”[37] When this disparity in income, education,
and social class is combined with the restrictive nature of commercial
surrogacy agreements, it becomes less clear that poor women can have a choice
other than to rent their one main skill/resource, i.e., their reproductive
capabilities. However, as the work of Ragoné and Snowdon demonstrate, many
surrogates in North America choose surrogacy as a means of increasing family
income, paying down the mortgage, purchasing material goods, etc.[38]
It is women in developing or underdeveloped countries who are most vulnerable
to exploitation, although women in developed countries are not necessarily free
of this concern.
Poor women may make ideal surrogate mothers as due to their financial
need, they are more likely to alienate themselves from the children they
produce, and being poor will not seek or be able to challenge surrogacy
contracts in court. With better embryo transfer techniques, commissioning
couples would not have to worry about the surrogate contributing genetic
material to their child. Instead, the surrogate would be simply a gestational
surrogate and little more than a ‘fetus-sitter’ for the couple’s future child.
Further, the price paid to surrogates could be reduced even further, perhaps to
one tenth of the present fees, as poor women are often simply trying to survive
and support their own families, and thus may simply “take what they can get.”
This situation puts into stark contrast the difference between surrogacy in the
developed and underdeveloped world. In developed countries, surrogacy may be a
choice for women to improve their financial situation and perform an altruistic
act; in underdeveloped countries, surrogacy may be a form of slavery, reminiscent
of the black nannies who raised white children in the American South during the
slavery era, or in Apartheid South Africa.
5. Motherhood Redefined?
New
reproductive technologies, and surrogacy in particular, challenge our
understanding of ‘motherhood’ and force us to question what it means in our
society. Has the very definition of ‘motherhood’ changed, or is it simply that
its application in the modern context of surrogacy arrangements has changed? As
was argued in the first section of this paper, the advent of new reproductive
technologies has led to a fragmentation of the components that are normally
assigned with the role of ‘mother’, and who is assigned to a particular
category. Under the traditional view, the ‘mother’ was normally the woman who
gave birth to the child and was biologically related. With surrogate
‘motherhood’, the biological connectedness to the child is brought into
question. How much relationship is entailed by gestation, nursing, and
mother-child bonding as compared to simply donating an egg? This is the crux of
the argument over whether non-genetic gestational surrogates are ‘mothers’. The
courts in the U.S., e.g., in Johnson v.
Calvert, have tended to rule against these women, treating their
gestational contribution as insufficient.[39]
However,
by contrast, the ACOG and the Warnock Committee maintained that the woman who
gestates and gives birth to the child is the legal mother – her contribution of
time, effort, and the intimate relational nature of the maternal environment are
sufficient for her to be considered the mother.[40]
In other words, they argue that the other primary element of ‘motherhood’,
i.e., ‘love’, must be considered of equal weight as ‘blood’ or genetic
contribution when assigning parental rights. The relational aspect of
motherhood is as important as the biological connection between mother and
child.[41]
This
focus would allow surrogate mothers, be they genetic or gestational, to claim
parental rights as mothers of the children they bear. In the case of the gestational
mother, this claim may create a conflict with the biological mother who donated
her egg, but it is a conflict over who has parental rights, and not so much a
conflict over who is ‘mother.’ Gestational surrogacy creates the new situation
in which a child has not one, but two biological mothers – one genetic and the
other gestational. While having multiple biological mothers is new, it has long
been accepted that a child could have multiple social mothers, i.e., adopted
mothers, step-mothers, or foster mothers. If the motherhood can be divided into
social and biological components without the concept of ‘motherhood’ being
changed, why then cannot the biological roles be subdivided as well? I
therefore agree with Schneider that the definition of ‘mother’ has not changed,
despite new understandings of what constitutes ‘blood’ relations. The idea that
motherhood includes social and biological aspects, ‘blood’ and ‘love’, is still
present. It is simply the case that these aspects of motherhood have fragmented
and can be allocated to multiple women. This fragmentation may create social
difficulties in determining who is the legal ‘mother’, but I think our basic
definition of ‘motherhood’ remains unchanged.
What then
are the affects of commercial surrogate arrangements? Does commercial surrogacy
threaten motherhood? As Ragoné’s study shows, commercial surrogacy can
challenge our ideal of mothers as being selfless nurturers, free from the
pressures of the market place. Remuneration seems to reduce surrogates to the
level of reproductive laborers, but surrogates also strive to downplay this
role and attempt to balance it with notions of altruism and gift giving. In a
society that does not really condone the commercialization of the private
family domain, surrogates are caught in an awkward position – they want to be
mothers and at the same time be valued for their reproductive work.
Nevertheless,
according to Rothman, motherhood resists commodification. This is particularly
evident in the difficulty that many women go through in deciding to have an
abortion. They cannot maintain the medical language, but instead often use the
language of infanticide, grief, and responsibility. With respect to surrogacy,
not all women are able to alienate themselves from their pregnancies. Some
women, such as Mary Beth Whitehead, change their minds when they realize that
they cannot go through with the process of giving up their child to another
couple. They cannot put price tags on their children, and cannot commodify
their motherhood.[42] It is
therefore unclear that surrogacy in particular devalues motherhood, even though
it changes the way mothers view themselves and are viewed by others.
Commercialization
may well lead to the exploitation of women in some situations (particularly in
developing or underdeveloped countries) and be justifiably prohibited for this
reason. Moreover, it may further contribute to the reduction of women and
motherhood to a purely biological understanding, such as seems to be evidenced
by the California court’s ruling in Johnson
v. Calvert. However, as with surrogacy in general, I do not believe that
commercialization changes our understanding or definition of ‘mother’. Mothers
will still be seen as embodying nurturing and ‘love’ relations, even if this
role as social mother is separated from the biological role. As Rothman
observes, women can still reject the commercialization of their motherhood.
Some women may be forced by oppressive or coercive circumstances to
essentialise themselves as being simply reproductive vessels for the
development of another’s child, and thus feel alienated from their motherhood.
But in the act of gestating and bearing a child, the woman reinstates herself
as a mother by participating in one aspect of motherhood – whether or not she
is defined as a ‘mother’ by others, she is still a mother.
Acknowledgements
The
author would like to thank Patricia Lee, Chris MacDonald, and Susan Cox for
their helpful comments on various versions of this paper; the anonymous
reviewers for this journal; and Michael Burgess for his generous and
enthusiastic support and supervision. Many of the ideas in this paper have
benefited from ongoing critique and discussion with the Genetics and Ethics
Research Group at the Centre for Applied Ethics, University of British
Columbia. This work was supported by the Canadian Health Services Research
Foundation, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and the Centre for Applied Ethics at the University
of British Columbia.
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Notes
