#2 — Legalising Surrogate Motherhood For Profit
Should we allow vulnerable women to be paid to exploit their bodies in pursuit of financial gain? Or is it altruistic to encourage the surrogate process for infertile parents?
[This is part of my Debate Series — topics curated from local and global debate competitions I participated in. P.S I included my rankings of this motion at the end of this blog :)]
Surrogacy is by all means a great way for infertile parents to get a child that is genetically their own.
In the majority of cases, these procedures go smoothly. But surrogacy’s soaring popularity has come at a human cost and stories of potential mistreatment in recent years.
Surrogacy is largely popular in third world countries where there are legal frameworks targets the vulnerable.
The following is a framework why surrogacy for profit should not be legalised:
The current legal frameworks targets the vulnerable
The current framework for surrogacy processes especially in third world countries — it opens a whole pandora box of ethical and moral problems that the current status quo and legal framework has FAILED.
Where surrogacy is mainly popular are in rural countries where statistically, women are largely uneducated, illiterate, and poor who are easily persuaded by their spouse or middlemen for earning “easy money”.
Imagine a scenario in the rural mountains of India, where a kind woman who has a beautiful family of 3 and a devoted labourer as a spouse but of course, this doesn’t make ends meet. Suddenly, they are short financially and they need money. They need money to pay for the school fees and piling hospital bills then, a lucrative man suggests “surrogacy” for its financial gain. The woman does not encourage, she does not want to go through another pregnancy, her body aches, her back trembles. However her spouse is telling her “do it do it do it” and she’s crying, crying, and crying. To save the family, to pay for the bills, the woman does it in pursuit of money.
These women often make uninformed decisions about their rights, body, and life in pursuit of financial intentions. When money is the main goal, this provides a room for exploitation and problems.
If surrogacy is legalised for profit, financially in-need fertile women who want to earn “easy money” would go out of their way to ensure that they do get this easy money which opens another black market. If the woman does not meet any of the requirements, then they’d most likely try to obtain illegal and false certificates only to meet the requirements to do surrogacy which is difficult to mandate and requires extra government cash.
The worst part is that in case of unfavourable outcome of pregnancy, they are unlikely to be paid, and there is no provision of insurance or post-pregnancy medical and psychiatric support for them.
We totally support opening government’s description of the status quo where insurance, psychological screening, legal counselling and government support are provided to surrogate mothers. However, we sadly stand here today because this is not the case where surrogacy is dominant and that when a corporate is built and tainted with greed and malice intentions, there is no way to ensure and enforce the safety of surrogate mothers, and unborn babies.
The Framework That We Propose
- Encouraging and facilitating the adoption process
In most countries, adopting a child may be legally meticulous and extremely difficult. In this framework, the adoption process will be made easier and facilitated so as to encourage adoption.
There are over millions of orphans around the world and this currently taxes the nonprofits supporting them. The current systems that keeps orphans safe, well fed, and healthy are currently overpopulated, exhausted and overly taxed. This can be relieved through encouraging adoption and there are two benefits to this: it 1) soothes the system for nonprofits that supports orphans 2) infertile, or fertile if that may be the case, can take care of uncared for children and babies.
We don’t see why surrogacy for profit should be encouraged. Governments can save tax dollars to be used on other equally important means. There is a solution to fixing the exhausted orphan system, it allows infertile parents to get fertile child in the end, and it saves immense government tax dollars.
2. Support surrogacy that is not for profit
While I don’t entirely condemn surrogacy since it’s a good way for infertile parents as a means to have a fertile child but it should only be encouraged only if it has strong legal frameworks that does not exploit people vulnerably.
I would encourage and mandate surrogacy that’s specifically not for profit because it allows abled-bodied women to still “feel empowered” to make informed decisions about their body and life, and this way leaves no room for exploitation because it does not have corrupted intentions. Instead it is in pursuit of a good deed, for altruistic means, and is, overall, charitable.
Would the women who largely do surrogacy for the financial gains, who are forced and persuaded by their spouse to do it for financial gain, still do it because it is morally uplifting? to go through all that pain because it is a “beautiful process”?
Conclusion
Years and years have gone by where surrogacy has been left largely an unfettered market. Legalising it for profit would open a pandora box of legal, ethical, and moral dilemmas that have largely remained full of deceit, greed, and malice.
There has been no solid framework proposed by any houses and this is why the framework of closing opposition should be considered:
- It encourages the adopting and collaterally thus relieves the adoption system
- It allows abled body women to make informed decisions in pursuit of altruistic intentions instead of based on financial gain
All in all, proud to oppose.
[Edit: it reads like a debate script because it is actually a debate script haha]
