Debating Surrogacy

Anca Gheaus is a political philosopher interested in justice and the normative significance of personal relationships, and is co-editor of The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Childhood and Children (2018) and published numerous journal articles and book chapters, primarily on issues concerning childrearing, gender justice, love, non-ideal theory, relational versus distributive egalitarianism, and methodological issues in political theory. Christine Straehle is Professor for Practical Philosophy at the University of Hamburg and Professor of Ethics and Applied Ethics at the University of Ottawa. Before her appointment in Hamburg, she was also the inaugural and founding director of the Centre for Philosophy, Politics and Economics in the Faculty of Philosophy at Groningen University in 2016, where she also held the Chair in Philosophy and Public Affairs. She was awarded several prizes and prestigious fellowships, such as the Kitty Newman Prize for Social Philosophy from theRoyal Society of Canada in 2019, and, most recently in 2023, a senior research fellowship at the Swedish Collegium of Advanced Studies.

For an excellent sense of what can lead to principled disagreement about whether surrogacy is permissible-even between those who accept that women should be free to make reproductive choices-read no further than this debate. The exchange of views Gheaus and Straehle offer is intelligent, well-informed, clearly written and philosophically literate with each side's position founded on important normative commitments about what it means to be a parent and what is owed to the future child.

• Introduction, Anca Gheaus and Christine StraehleSurrogacy definedSurrogacy and The LawEthical Worries Surrounding SurrogacyThe Book Part One: Defending Surrogacy as Reproductive Labour, Christine StraehleIntroduction I. Surrogacy and Free Occupational ChoiceI.1. Why is freedom of occupational choice important in liberal theory?I.2. Two Justifications for the Right to Freedom of Occupational Choice II. Surrogacy, Autonomy and Individual AgencyII.1. Reasons for Limits: Harm to Self, Harm to Society and ProfessionalizationII. 2. Surrogacy and the Limits of Freedom of Professional Choice III. Surrogacy, Commercialization, Reproduction and ParentingIII.1. Surrogacy as Commercialization vs Surrogacy as ParentingIII.2. Surrogacy and gendered societyIII.3. Surrogacy as Harm to Society: applying market norms to the family sphere IV. Surrogacy As WorkIV.1. Professional requirements and justifiable limitsIV. 2. Surrogacy as licensed work ConclusionNotes Against Private Surrogacy: A Child-Centered View, Anca GheausI. Introduction II. The intuitive case against surrogacy III. Parents, their rights, and the interests of childrenIII.1. General assumptionsIII.2. The right to become a parentIII.3. Parents' rights and children's interestsIII. 4. Two caveats IV. What is surrogacy? Three modelsIV.1. The child-trafficking modelIV.2. The privately arranged adoption modelIV.3. The provision of services and gametes model V. Full Surrogacy with intending parents' gametesV.1. Child-centered appeals to genetic connections and the right to parentV.3. Appeals to the gestational connectionV.4. Creatures of attachment: the general impermissibility of surrogacy agreements VI. Harm to children? The challenge from the non-identity problem VII. Conclusion: a respectful and humane form of surrogacy Notes Part Two What's in it for the Baby? - Weighing Children's and Parents' Interests in Commercial Surrogacy Agreements - A Reply to Gheaus, Christine StraehleI. Introduction II. Where we agree: The interests of children III. Where we disagree: Relationships IV. Where we disagree: the role of the state Conclusion Notes Women and Children First - A Reply to Straehle, Anca Gheaus I. Introduction II. Where we agree: gestating for another III. Where we disagree: the women IV. Where we disagree: the children V. Is Straehle's hybrid defence of surrogacy stable? Conclusions Notes Index