Wednesday, March 6, 2013

Fertility Tourism, Do the Ends Justify the Means?

When listening to Molly Shanley's March 10th lecture on Fertility Tourism and the Ethics of Inter-country Surrogacy, I was surprised to learn that Professor Shanley believes that fertility tourism is ethical. While Shanley notes that surrogacy often creates an unnatural hierarchy of humans (and often social classes), can created a skewed vision of family, and seems outright exploitative (and potentially reminiscent of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, a dystopian novel where
the main character's body is politicized and no longer allowed reproductive or even sexual freedom), she also believes the pros of surrogacy outweigh the cons and that the reproductive justice that surrogacy allows is enough to qualify its morality.
I was incredibly intrigued by Shanley's discussion of reproductive rights versus reproductive justice. I thought it was very interesting that a Women's Studies professor (that I'll admit, just by the job title I though would be a adamant feminist) would argue for the subjectivity of an issue such as reproductive rights. She argues that the morality of surrogacy extends past reproductive rights, or the choice that an individual woman has about the when and how and where and even if she wants a child to reproductive justice, or the idea that parents (or parent) should be completely ready for parenthood and able to give the child valid and affirmed human relationships, stressing the importance of the new (or unborn) life as well.
Shanley's ethical views were a little hard to follow as she didn't assess the argument from a theoretical lens, but yet more of an emotional lens, focusing on the sympathy one should feel for the child being brought into the world.
Because of this, I am curious also how one can begin to stay dispassionate in these issues as we have been trying to do when analyzing ethical method.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.