[Taking Altruistic Surrogacy Seriously]

Since two years ago Spanish public opinion is living an intense debate on the ethical and legal aspects about surrogacy. There is a shared concern about the risks of exploitation for women related to commercial surrogacy. To get rid of them, and make possible at the same time that people who is not able to gestate could become father/mother, it has been proposed to regulate altruistic surrogacy. In order to defend this proposal it is said that there is an analogy between altruistic organ donation and altruistic surrogacy: you can help a person in need giving an organ or your ability to gestate. In this paper I confront both considerations. First, there is not a real analogy between organ donation and altruistic surrogacy. And second, if we think seriously a possible regulation for altruistic surrogacy we will find many problems with difficult or impossible solutions.