Tac Lau

Brian Ward
Philosophy
11 September 2016
Regulation of Surrogacy
I strongly believe that the practice of surrogacy should be regulated to ensure the safety
of a child. There were many incidents around the world in which the practice of surrogacy was
abused, which resulted in an unprotected child. I remembered reading an online news article
about such incident in 2014. An Australian couple hired a surrogate mother in Thailand to give
birth to their child through gestational surrogacy. Months later into the surrogate pregnancy,
medical results of the pregnancy indicated that the surrogate was carrying twins. One of the
twins named Gammy was reported to have down syndrome. As a result, the Australian couple
kept only the healthy twin while suggested that the surrogate should abort the unhealthy twin.
Despite the surrogates difficult background, she gave birth to the child and raised him because
of her Buddhist beliefs. There are cases like these that require a universal law to ensure the
wellbeing of not only the surrogate, but the child as well. There should be laws that state clearly
that once surrogacy has been agreed upon between the surrogate and the intended parents, then
the agreements should hold regardless of the outcome. The surrogate and the intended parents
should negotiate beforehand about any stipulations that both parties may have such as the
allowable conditions of the child to avoid abortion. The laws should punish the party (especially
the intended couple) if they change their mind about accepting the child despite all terms were
met.

There are two types of surrogacy, traditional and gestational. In traditional surrogacy, the
surrogate is the egg donor and is impregnate through an insemination process. Therefore, the
surrogate is the biological mother of the born child. On the other hand, in gestational surrogacy
the surrogate has no biological relation with the child except that she was the carrier. Often times
in gestational, the egg and sperm of the intended parents are used. As a result, I believe that
surrogates can only change their mind if traditional surrogacy was the process that gave birth to
the child. My reasoning for this is because half of the childs DNA is related to the surrogate, and
the child is living off of her until birth. As a result, it is hard for the surrogate to not feel close to
the child that she bears as her own. I know half of the childs DNA may be part of the intended
father, but I believe the pain and sacrifices that the surrogate undergoes to give birth to the child
should give her the option to decide. However, if it was a gestational surrogacy process then the
law should say that they will be not be allowed to change their mind about keeping the child
because the child is biologically unrelated to her apart from the fact that she was the incubator.