Abstract
As with most other areas of reproduction, surrogacy is highly regulated. But the legislation and policies on surrogacy are written in such ways that make large (and possibly mistaken) assumptions about the metaphysical relationship between the mother and the fetus—whether the fetus is a part of, or contained by, the mother. It is the purpose of this chapter to highlight these assumptions and to demonstrate the impact that alternative metaphysical views can have on our conceptualization of surrogacy. With that in mind, I recommend that our public policies on surrogacy be at least neutral or otherwise responsive to metaphysics rather than presupposing it, such that the regulation and legislation of surrogacy will be metaphysically informed.
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Notes
- 1.
One could argue that the metaphysical situation is different for ‘host’ and ‘straight’ surrogacies because the donated egg is relevant to whether the fetus is a part of or contained by the gestational mother. However, I am explicitly assuming that all cases of pregnancy involve the same metaphysical model, and I then ask how that metaphysical model is and should be connected to public policy.
- 2.
Mary Lyndon Shanley, “‘Surrogate Mothering’ and Women’s Freedom: A Critique of Contracts for Human Reproduction,” Signs 18, no. 3 (1993): 619.
- 3.
Here I am talking of pregnancy in a sociologically neutral and biologically centered way. But does the social status of surrogacy impact on the metaphysical model involved in the pregnancy? Since I am interested in understanding pregnancy per se from a metaphysical point of view, then I take the answer to be no—nobody can deny that surrogate mothers are pregnant, and it is this notion of being pregnant that I wish to model metaphysically. So I argue that surrogate pregnancy, in virtue of being a pregnancy, has the same metaphysical model as any other pregnancy, regardless of social differences.
- 4.
Barbara Katz Rothman, “The Legacy of Patriarchy as Context for Surrogacy: or Why are we quibbling over this?,” American Journal of Bioethics 14, no. 5 (2014): 36. And a quote from Barbara Katz Rothman, in Susanna Pozzolo, “Round Table: ‘Surrogacy’ or Pregnancy for others. A first round of opinions,” About Gender: International Journal of Gender Studies 5, no. 10 (2016): 336.
- 5.
The phrase ‘contract pregnancy’ is used elsewhere in the literature; see, for example, Debra Satz, “Markets in Women’s Reproductive Labor,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 21, no. 2 (1992): 107.
- 6.
The sort of containment I am discussing is mere containment, rather than a containment that allows for parthood. For example, a bun in the oven is an example of the oven merely containing the bun, but the shelf in the oven is an example of the oven containing the shelf as a part.
- 7.
It may be the case that the fetus is neither a part of nor contained by the gestational mother, since there may be other options that are not as extreme as these two models. It may also be that the model can change at different times throughout the pregnancy. I do not have the space to discuss these here.
- 8.
Elselijn Kingma, “Were you a part of your mother?,” Mind (forthcoming). Emphasis in original.
- 9.
Barry Smith and Berit Brogaard, “Sixteen Days,” Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 28 (2003): 74.
- 10.
See Roberto Casati and Achille C Varzi (2014), ‘Holes’, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Zalta, E. N. (ed.), URL = http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2014/entries/holes/ accessed July 1, 2017, for holes, where the thing with a hole is the ‘host’ and anything that goes inside the hole is a ‘guest’.
- 11.
“Surrogacy UK”, accessed July 1, 2017, http://www.surrogacyuk.org/intended_parents/your-questions-answered
- 12.
“Harley Street Fertility Clinic”, accessed July 1, 2017, http://hsfc.org.uk/fertility/surrogacy/
- 13.
Margaret Brazier, Susan Golombok, and Alastair Campbell, “Surrogacy: review for the UK Health Ministers of current arrangements for payments and regulation,” Human Reproduction Update 1997 3.6 (1997): 5.13 p624.
- 14.
Surrogacy Arrangements Act (1985) Chapter 49 p1. Accessed July 1, 2017.
- 15.
Smith and Brogaard, “Sixteen Days,” 65.
- 16.
Elizabeth S Anderson, “Is Women’s Labor a Commodity?,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 19, no. 1 (1990): 83.
- 17.
Quotes from Daniela Danna, Emanuela Bonini and Susanna Pozzolo, “Round Table: Desires and rights. Surrogacy at the crossroads of new ethical dilemmas? Round table about GPA, second round,” About Gender: International Journal of Gender Studies 6, no. 11 (2017): 395 and 401.
- 18.
Kajsa Ekis Ekman, Being and Being Bought: Prostitution, Surrogacy, and the Split Self (Spinifex Press, 2013), 157. Ekman goes on to argue this ‘process of abstraction’ from oneself is similar to that found in prostitution. Ekman seems to hold a Parthood model of pregnancy and uses it to claim that ‘few workers would say that their hands or feet are not their own, as prostitutes or surrogates insist that parts of their bodies are not themselves’. Ekman, Being and Being Bought, 173. Emphasis in original.
- 19.
Amrita Pande, “Commercial Surrogacy in India: Manufacturing a Perfect Mother-Worker,” Signs 4, vol. 35 (2010): 977. Indeed this quote refers to ‘surrogates’ in India who are commissioned by Western intended parents, yet given the earlier quotation from ‘Surrogacy UK’, we can see that this message is applicable to how ‘surrogates’ are perceived in the United Kingdom too.
- 20.
Brazier, Golombok, and Campbell, “Surrogacy: review for the UK Health Ministers of current arrangements for payments and regulation,” p45.
- 21.
Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act (2008) Chapter 22 part 2 section 33 p37. Accessed July 1, 2017.
- 22.
Smith and Brogaard , “Sixteen Days,” 46. They connect the issue of timing (when humans exist) with abortion, yet I connect the issue of relationship (between the fetus and gestational mother) with surrogacy.
- 23.
Postdoctoral Research Fellow, project BUMP: Better Understanding the Metaphysics of Pregnancy. Address: Faculty of Humanities, Avenue Campus, University of Southampton, SO17 1BF, UK.
E-mail: suki.finn@soton.ac.uk.
Funding acknowledgements: This chapter is part of a project that has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program, under grant agreement number 679586.
Special thanks go to Elselijn Kingma, Fiona Woollard, Sara Davies, Barbara Katz Rothman, Alex Geddes, Teresa Baron, Jonathan Grose, and Ziggy Schilpzand, for their very helpful comments and input on this chapter. I am also grateful to the audience of the C-SWIP ‘Feminism, Philosophy, and Engaging the Public’ conference for their feedback where I presented an earlier version of this chapter.
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Finn, S. (2018). The Metaphysics of Surrogacy. In: Boonin, D. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Philosophy and Public Policy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93907-0_49
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