Surrogate motherhood Dissertation Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Surrogate motherhood - Dissertation Example Surrogate motherhood is a theme that evokes numerous opinions. There are many supporters of surrogate motherhood as well as many opponents. Neither of them is right or either of them is right in their own way. This research project is not focused on considerations of opponents or proponents. The literature review presented further on is focused on a current paradigm of surrogate motherhood. It is supposed that it is relevant to pay for surrogate motherhood to women who have already given birth to their own children. Physical and emotional load of surrogate motherhood is evident and it is not an easy labor. There should be no commercial spirit of surrogate motherhood, but it should be paid like any other kind of labor. Legal aspect of surrogate motherhood A common surrogate motherhood criticism is determined by the claim that it is impossible to buy or to sell a child. A child is not a commodity and money relationship is irrelevant from this perspective. In the New York State Task For ce on Life and the Law it is concluded that â€Å"the exchange of money for possession or control of children.., threatens to erode the way that society thinks about and values children, and by extension all human life†Ã'Ž Thus, from this perspective, a child’s birth is the natural outcome of a certain deal and it can be transferred from one party to another for money. A supposition that children in this case are treated like commodities can be contradicted by the fact that sometimes parts of a human body are treated like objects (Meehan, 2000). It can be argued that commodities require cleaning, cherishing etc, so it is not wrong in this context to treat children as commodities or objects. Thus, it is relevant to consider in this context people who pay money to buy a child from a surrogate mother. A good treatment is usually guaranteed to a child who is bought. From another perspective, such kind of an immoral treatment is irrelevant, because children are not commodi ties from the very beginning. Babies are given by God and it is not proper to sell or too buy them. With this respect one may argue that for example, when an individual wants to meet his spouse he pays for a matrimonial agency. But in this case a future spouse is not bought; it is just a money transfer to a matrimonial agency. Thus, it can be said that not a child is bought, but services of a surrogate mother are bought. Moreover, the services of a commercial surrogacy agency are bought. At this point it is relevant to talk about surrogacy arrangement. It is a cruel reality of the modern world that parents want to become legal parents and receive custody rights and for this purpose they have to pay a certain sum of money. A surrogate mother wants to get money for her services of bearing a child since it is a hard work to bear a child. An interesting suggestion is provided by†¦: â€Å"In a commercial surrogacy agreement, the commissioning couple could be thought of as buying pa rticular services from the surrogate mother. But it is not necessary to suppose that anything at all is bought or sold† (Mitchell, Pellegrino, Elshtain, Kilner & Rae, 2006). In this case obligations of one party imply that it gives money to another party in case obligations are fulfilled. This is a pragmatic paradigm that is often discussed in the contemporary researches and studies in this field. Therefore, we can surely claim that no illegal basis lies in terms of these contracts. There is a well-known paradigm suggested by Blyth and Potter, who claim that surrogacy does not imply buying or selling children, because future parents â€Å"might even imagine that they have purchased a particular baby.., what they have paid for is not necessarily the same as what they think they have paid for† (Mclachlan&Swales, 2009). This is an interesting claim and it is worth considering. There is such kind of cases, when future parents rejected to take the baby from a surrogate mothe r when it has already come into the world. Therefore, a legal