Revisiting child-based objections to commercial surrogacy.

Area of Science:

• Bioethics
• Family Law
• Reproductive Technologies

Background:

• Critics argue commercial surrogacy violates children's rights, particularly through child-selling.
• Existing defenses of surrogacy often fail to adequately address these child-centric objections.

Purpose of the Study:

• To respond to common objections that commercial surrogacy infringes upon children's rights.
• To provide a framework for understanding how parental rights are ethically acquired in commercial surrogacy.

Main Methods:

• Philosophical analysis of ethical objections to commercial surrogacy.
• Examination of arguments concerning child-selling and parental rights.
• Rejection of specific child-based objections: market in attributes, deviation from best interests standard, and surrogate's neglect of responsibilities.

Main Results:

• The common child-selling objection to commercial surrogacy can be overcome.
• Parental rights are acquired through claims over reproductive labor, not necessarily by performing it.
• Three further child-based objections are analyzed and found unconvincing.

Conclusions:

• Children's rights do not inherently pose an obstacle to the ethical acceptability of commercial surrogacy.
• Commercial surrogacy can be distinguished from commercial adoption through the concept of reproductive labor.
• The ethical framework supports the legitimacy of commercial surrogacy arrangements.