The ethics of surrogacy
October 1, 2014
Carolyn McLeod and Andrew Botterell
As a visiting professor at the Centre for Ethics at the University of Toronto during the past academic year, professor Andrew Botterell and his spouse, Western University Philosophy professor Carolyn McLeod, explored the variety of ethical issues that can arise when families are created through adoption, IVF, and contract pregnancy.
Together, they have co-authored four papers that investigate the moral relationship between adoption, contract pregnancy (or surrogacy) and the nature of the so-called right to reproduce.
“The conventional view is that biological families are preferable to adoptive ones”, said Botterell. “We find this general position problematic and much of our recent work has been devoted to explaining why.”
Botterell and McLeod argue that since the convention on inter-country adoption explicitly includes a parental licensing requirement for adoptive parents, any convention on contract pregnancy must include a similar licensing requirement in order to be ethically consistent.
“Our view is that to the extent that there are good reasons for licensing adoptive parents – and it’s not entirely clear to us that there are – those considerations carry over into reasons for licensing individuals seeking to become parents via IVF or contract pregnancy,” said Botterell.
This article appeared in the Western Law 2014 Alumni Magazine.
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