Surrogacy at Its Best?

I came across this story on the web this AM.   It seems to me to illustrate surrogacy at its finest.   Because I’ve gone at length about surrogacy at a number of different times  in the past, and because I am deeply skeptical of much about surrogacy, I thought it might be worth lingering here for a few moments. 

Jamie Underwood Collins is 8 1/2 months pregnant with a baby that is intended for a New York couple.    She’s married and has four kids of her own.   While she’s being paid something around $25,000 it doesn’t seem that the need for money was her primary motivation.   Rather, this was something Collins wanted to do for someone.   There’s nothing shameful about being a surrogate, at least as Collins sees it.   (She wears a T-shirt that says “This is not my husband’s baby” on the front and “But it’s not mine either.  I’m a proud surrogate” on the back.  

The Wrong Embryo, II

I just sat down to write this entry, inspired by this morning’s Today Show and lo, I found I had already used my title.  Six months ago I wrote about another wrong embryo case, but I guess I’d forgotten.   Just goes to show that, as I said in that earlier post, accidents will happen.  

Anyway, here is the story from this AM:  Carolyn and Sean Savage had used IVF to conceive their third child.  They had left-over embryos which were frozen.   They decided they wanted to try to have a fourth child and so went to have the embryos thawed and transferred. 

A pregnancy resulted.   But it turned out the clinic had used the wrong embryos–embryos that had been prepared and stored for some other couple.   Somehow this came to light quite quickly (though obviously not quickly enough) and so the news of the error arrived along with the news that Carolyn was pregnant.   

Paying for a Child

There’s a not so very recent story from Alternet that I’ve been meaning to comment on for some time.  I’ve been waiting until my thoughts were properly collected, but I’m beginning to think that will take too long, so I figured I’d just start thinking out loud, as it were. 

The story is really worth a read.   It starts me down two different trains of thought.  One is really about surrogacy and that whole set of questions.  I’ve said quite a lot about all that before (just look at the tags–altrusitic surrogacy, gestational surrogacy, plain surrogacy, and so on.)  I should revisit all that to see if I’d still say the same thing, but I won’t do that just now. 

Instead, this story set me thinking about a different and broader topic:   what can/should/do people pay to have a child.   There’s at least two different ways in which one could expand this question.  

I take it as a given that children are not to be bought/sold, but you could quibble with this assumption if you chose to.  Given that point, you could think about all the different things that might count for some as buying a child.  

Egg Buying, II

The story I blogged about a week-and-a-half ago has finally reached the NY Times.   (This is the one about NY state now paying women to donate eggs for stem cell research.) 

The story prompted me to return to this thread for a moment.  As the NY Times makes clear, for some the concern about buying the eggs is that women will give their eggs for other than altruistic reasons. 

This suggests two distinctions are being drawn–first, between altruistic and non-altruistic behavior, and second, between donating eggs for IVF as opposed to donating eggs for research.  It’s apparently okay to donate eggs for IVF no matter what your motivation but, at least for some people, it’s only okay to donate eggs for research for altruistic reasons.  

Global Surrogacy Update

Here’s a recent article from the BBC. It’s been quite a while since I’ve discussed the globalization of surrogacy in any detail.   It sounds as though some sort of regulatory legislation may be proceeding in India, which is one of the main foreign destinations for intended parents.

Three things particularly strike me in the article.   First, the reference to someone as a professional surrogate mother.   There’s really no reason why only the brokers in the middle should be considered professional, but it does seem a bit at odds with the ideal of altruistic surrogacy.

Second, the reference to restrictions the intended parents place upon the surrogate–here the foods she eats and the methods of transportation she utilizes.   Actually, perhaps as much as anything what’s striking here is the phrase used in the story–”dictate terms.”    It’s all about control.   For that period of time during which she is pregnant, the surrogate may be subject to the terms dictated by the intended parents.   It’s really not that surprising, given how carefully pregnancy is managed these days.

Finally, the description of the relationship between surrogate and IP towards the end of the article as “mutually beneficial.”   The following quote is  “[s]he is getting the money she wants and we are getting a baby.”   I guess that makes it seem pretty stark to me.  And again, I am left to ponder the difference between the transaction described here and the actual purchase of a child.

Perhaps I just need to get over that hurdle and say that under certain circumstances, baby-selling could be okay.  But surely if I were to go down that path, I’d insist on rigorous regulation of the practice, which seems at odds with the current largely unregulated state of surrogacy.

Surrogacy Gone Bad

I digress from my discussion in progress to comment on this item from today’s news.   This is indeed surrogacy gone bad but not, I suspect, in the manner that most people think about.

It appears that SurroGenesis, a for-profit web-promoted, globally marketed surrogacy agency, has taken the money and run.   (I’m astonished to find that the website it still up and running.  I imagine it won’t be for long.)  SurroGenesis is one of a number (does anyone have any idea how many?) of for-profit surrogacy agencies that essentially act as a brokers and facilitators.  They locate surrogates and intended parents, as well as egg donors.   They connect them up with each other and, at least ostensibly, deal with a host of details.   Perhaps most important for the moment, they hold the money that is to be paid the surrogate.

Except, of course, in this case they didn’t hold the money.  They took it.   Perhaps as much as two million dollars all told.   For some couples this means they’ve paid SurroGenesis and lost their money.   That’s bad, of course, but there are a small number of people who find themselves in a much worse position.  In at least two instances recounted in the paper, there are women who are pregnant as surrogates, expecting to be paid and to deliver the children (in both senses of the words) to the intended parents in the not-too-distant future.  But now the money that made these transactions work is gone.  The intended parents have paid it, but the surrogates have not (and likely never will) receive it.  

Surrogacy Round-Up

A couple of different items relating to surrogacy have come across my desk (figuratively, anyway) in the past week or two.   Rather than do a series of short posts, I thought I’d try putting them together and then offering some comments.

But before that, a general observation:   It’s striking how much surrogacy is in the news these days.   I know that, given the commercial media and the Internet, news coverage begets more news coverage–once the NYT magazine runs a story on surrogacy, a thousand blogs (mine among them) comment on it and then more news outlets pick it up, some developing their own angles, creating their own news.    Still, even if I do a discount for that, surrogacy seems to be much in the news–more than a year ago or two years ago or five years ago.

Now it is not that the technology has suddenly changed.   The technology of surrogacy (which is basically IVF) has been around for a while now.   I’m sure the techniques and their reliability have improved, but I don’t think it is changing technology that has propelled the issue to higher visibility.    

Surrogacy Again–Tentative Language Choice?

Over a week ago I wrote that I needed to come up with some new language to distinguish between two forms of surrogacy that I had been calling “altruistic surrogacy” and “commercial surrogacy.”    The distinction is, to my mind, crucial.   But the designations I was using weren’t really apt.   The vast majority of surrogates are motivated in part by altruism, whether they work in a more generally commercial system or not.   And the majority of surrogates receive significant amounts of money, whether they are engaged in what has been called compassionate or altruistic surrogacy or not.   Thus, most surrogacy is both altruistic and commercial.

This recognition lead me to want to find a better name for the forms of surrogacy I seek to distinguish, one which actually emphasizes the difference.    I’ve been casting about now for over a week with little success.   In the meantime, I must have something to use.  So for now, though I don’t think it is perfect, I will settle on “binding surrogacy” instead of what I have been calling “commercial surrogacy.”   “Binding surrogacy” is at least a move in the right direction.   In what I have been calling “commercial surrogacy” and will now call “binding surrogacy” the surrogate is legally bound to surrender the child when it is born.

Which Comes First?

While I’m stuck on the language front (see previous post) I figured I’d turn to something else I’ve been thinking about.

Some discussions of surrogacy begin with the question of whether we should allow surrogacy. I’m increasingly inclined to say that the answer to that, at least for me, depends on what exactly you mean by “surrogacy.” But that’s actually not the focus of what I want to write about here. For now let’s just assume you mean surrogacy where the woman who gives birth is legally compelled to surrender the child. (You can leap back to some older posts for some musing on different things “surrogacy” might mean.)

The point I want now is that however you answer that question, you are also answering a second, unarticulated question. That second question is “Should a woman who gives birth be recognized as a legal parent of the child she gives birth to?” If you say we should allow the form of binding surrogacy I describe, then you must also say she is not a mother. (That’s because, as I’ve remarked a number of times, we do not permit the purchase/sale of parental rights/children.) In other words, “yes” to surrogacy in this form necessarily requires “no” to the “is she a mother” question.

Harder Than It Seems

(Picking up from yesterday, so start here.)

It’s harder than I thought to pick substitutes for “altruistic surrogacy” and “commercial surrogacy.”   “Bound surrogacy” is really a bad choice for a number of reasons, not least of which it’s pretty clearly negative connotation.   “Free surrogacy” won’t do as an alternative, because it isn’t without cost.

This actually leads me to think back on some other terminology issues around surrogacy.  In particular, some people prefer not to use “surrogate mother” because it includes “mother” and they would contend that the surrogate is not a mother at all.   For this reason, you see “carrier” used.    And some, of course, object to that.   Carrier sounds a bit like luggage, after all.

I do think the language matters, in this as in many contexts.  Insisting that a sperm donor is not a father makes perfect sense to me.

Which is why I’m stuck here just now.  Because I think it matters.   Because the terms need to capture the difference I’m seeking to highlight.   “Revocable” versus “irrevocable” surrogacy?   Or perhaps, now that I think of it, “surrogate mother” (for the woman who is a mother and can change her mind) versus “carrier” (for the woman who is simply providing a residence for the developing embryo?

I don’t really think these terms will do.   And I am stuck.  I’ll try again tomorrow.