Is it ethical to outsource pregnancy?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Is she paid well? Not just for her physical contribution but fur what you know, as someone who has given birth, can be a serious emotional upheaval as well? Like paid really, really, really well?

Is she doing this truly consensually with no weird power imbalances? Or is she a desperate woman in a desperate situation. You can (and should) heavily vet surrogacy agencies to find out how they recruit.

If the answer to the above is yes, and you have a *perfect* surrogacy contract, I think it can be done ethically. The contract has a lot of details you need to u sweat and though. I wouldn’t do it unless/until you have walked through and u d’état and every provision and why it is there.

Women still DIE from pregnancy and childbirth. Another person should risk their life bc OP doesn't want stretch marks??? Esp if the surrogate is a black women the odds are worse. Oh, wait. OP would never use a black surrogate never mind.

Roofers DIE from falling off a roof. Another person should risk their life because OP doesn’t want to do her own roofing? Many, many jobs entail risk, which is baked into the requirements for taking that job. Women who have had or are likely to have high-risk pregnancies do not qualify to be surrogates.

Stop paternalistically telling surrogates what they can and can’t do with their bodies. Trust women to make their own decisions.

You are comparing surrogacy to roofing. I can't even with you.

I'm not talking to surrogates or telling them what to do. I'm talking to OP who wants to not get pregnant for VANITY. That's disgusting and vile.

Why is it ethical for you to rent someone’s muscles, but not their uterus? Because it is her special sacred lady-place? I’m reminded of an article I read years ago about Indian surrogacy and some pious white foreigner asking a surrogate if she felt exploited. She laughed politely and said that her previous job had been literally breaking rocks, and that was exploitation.

Why can't both be exploitative?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It’s interesting to me how upset people here are about OP‘s motivations, as if that has any impact on the morality of the act. I think that the morality comes from how you perform the act, not whether you were doing it from an “acceptable” set of motivations. You can have an unethical surrogacy that you entered into for medical reasons only. You can have an ethical surrogacy because the idea of being pregnant seems yucky to you.

The ethics in it are about how you treat the other person, not what your decision-making process to get there is.

That's because motivation absolutely bears on whether an act is moral or not, as does execution. Carving into a person's chest to perform life-saving surgery? Moral. Carving into a person's chest to watch them die? Immoral. Carving into a person's chest to perform open heart surgery even though you have no medical training? Immoral. Performing a hysterectomy because a woman has decided she doesn't want kids? Moral. Performing a hysterectomy because the government has decided that ethnic group should not reproduce? Immoral. Performing a hysterectomy in your garage because a woman has decided she doesn't want kids? Immoral.

Et cetera. The fact that morally defensible motivation is a necessary but not sufficient factor in determining morality doesn't mean that execution is the only thing that matters.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you don’t have any medical reason to do so. I just don’t want to be pregnant again, gain weight and have to try to lose it again. have my body change permanently, give birth etc.

And I can easily afford a surrogate.

Would you do it in my situation?

It is immoral and you are amoral. If I were your husband, I would divorce you and get 100% custody of children and never allow you to see them again

You people are histrionic. And honestly I think this attitude is founded in misogyny. We can and do outsource absolutely every other aspect of the human experience, and for the most part none of that is considered immoral as long as all parties are consenting and the transaction is at arms length. But for some reason gestating a pregnancy is an absolute red line that we cannot ever cross - why? Interrogate why you think pregnancy and childbirth is such a sacred part of being a mother.

Also some thought experiments here to narrow down what you think the problem is:

- is it immoral for a gay male couple to use a surrogate to have a baby?
- is it immoral for a woman who cannot get pregnant to use a surrogate? what about a woman who could get pregnant but is at high risk for complications - is use of a surrogate immoral for her?
- is it immoral for a woman who cannot carry a pregnancy to have her own egg/embryo implanted into another woman for surrogacy?
- is it immoral for a woman who cannot produce viable eggs to use donor eggs to get pregnant?
- is it immoral for an intended mother to use donor sperm to get pregnant when her partner/intended father's sperm isn't viable?
- is it immoral for a single woman to use donor sperm to become a single mother on purpose?
- is it immoral to use donor eggs/sperm in situations where the intended parent may have viable reproductive sperm/eggs, but has a genetic condition or other issue that they don't want to pass on to their children?
- is adoption immoral?

There are a thousand other shades of grey questions in between, but if you think some of these situations are fine and others are "immoral", I urge you to think about why. What bright line rule can you articulate about what is moral when it comes to reproductive technology?

Do you not get the difference between - I can't do something vs I don't wanna because of bikini season??

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The surrogate’s cells will be inside your baby’s body forever. Your baby’s cells will be in the surrogate’s forever as well. Google microchimerism.

1. This is a relatively rare phenomenon, so definitely not true for all women and babies. Especially not the "forever" part.

2. So what?

-1- it’s not rare — it is almost universal. It’s not a huge number of cells but autopsies suggest that bio moms have them until death.

-2- few labs study this, nobody understands what these cells are doing, but there are some pretty interesting ideas. You asked if it was ethical, so this is just another dimension to consider.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/bies.201500059

I'm struggling to see how this medical phenomenon impacts the question of morality.

Let’s see…because you are exposing the surrogate to a host of medical issues that scientists are aware of but don’t understand? Because it’s ethically more complex to acknowledge that this intimate relationship does not end after nine months and the check cashes?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you don’t have any medical reason to do so. I just don’t want to be pregnant again, gain weight and have to try to lose it again. have my body change permanently, give birth etc.

And I can easily afford a surrogate.

Would you do it in my situation?

It is immoral and you are amoral. If I were your husband, I would divorce you and get 100% custody of children and never allow you to see them again

You people are histrionic. And honestly I think this attitude is founded in misogyny. We can and do outsource absolutely every other aspect of the human experience, and for the most part none of that is considered immoral as long as all parties are consenting and the transaction is at arms length. But for some reason gestating a pregnancy is an absolute red line that we cannot ever cross - why? Interrogate why you think pregnancy and childbirth is such a sacred part of being a mother.

Also some thought experiments here to narrow down what you think the problem is:

- is it immoral for a gay male couple to use a surrogate to have a baby?
- is it immoral for a woman who cannot get pregnant to use a surrogate? what about a woman who could get pregnant but is at high risk for complications - is use of a surrogate immoral for her?
- is it immoral for a woman who cannot carry a pregnancy to have her own egg/embryo implanted into another woman for surrogacy?
- is it immoral for a woman who cannot produce viable eggs to use donor eggs to get pregnant?
- is it immoral for an intended mother to use donor sperm to get pregnant when her partner/intended father's sperm isn't viable?
- is it immoral for a single woman to use donor sperm to become a single mother on purpose?
- is it immoral to use donor eggs/sperm in situations where the intended parent may have viable reproductive sperm/eggs, but has a genetic condition or other issue that they don't want to pass on to their children?
- is adoption immoral?

There are a thousand other shades of grey questions in between, but if you think some of these situations are fine and others are "immoral", I urge you to think about why. What bright line rule can you articulate about what is moral when it comes to reproductive technology?

Do you not get the difference between - I can't do something vs I don't wanna because of bikini season??

PP here. The questions above were intended to make you think about what *exactly* you think is immoral. If using a surrogate is okay for women who cannot carry their own pregnancy - then it's not the actual act of using a surrogate that you think is immoral. So what is it?

[Anonymous]

Basically, you are saying that the way your body looks and your health are more important and worthy than another woman's body and healthy because you have the cash.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s interesting to me how upset people here are about OP‘s motivations, as if that has any impact on the morality of the act. I think that the morality comes from how you perform the act, not whether you were doing it from an “acceptable” set of motivations. You can have an unethical surrogacy that you entered into for medical reasons only. You can have an ethical surrogacy because the idea of being pregnant seems yucky to you.

The ethics in it are about how you treat the other person, not what your decision-making process to get there is.

That's because motivation absolutely bears on whether an act is moral or not, as does execution. Carving into a person's chest to perform life-saving surgery? Moral. Carving into a person's chest to watch them die? Immoral. Carving into a person's chest to perform open heart surgery even though you have no medical training? Immoral. Performing a hysterectomy because a woman has decided she doesn't want kids? Moral. Performing a hysterectomy because the government has decided that ethnic group should not reproduce? Immoral. Performing a hysterectomy in your garage because a woman has decided she doesn't want kids? Immoral.

Et cetera. The fact that morally defensible motivation is a necessary but not sufficient factor in determining morality doesn't mean that execution is the only thing that matters.

But none of your examples hinge on motivation.

Life-saving surgery is moral.
Unnecessary surgery is immoral.
Performing the procedure you’re not competent to execute is immoral.
Performing a procedure that has been requested is moral.

Not a single one of these takes the decision making process into account, nor should it. You would have to construct some pretty complicated cases to tease this one out.

What if someone performs life-saving surgeries, but they do it only for the ego rush? They’re saving lives for a bad motivation.
What if someone kills those who they sincerely believe make the world a worse place? They’re taking lives for a good motivation.

Gicome up with some cases that actually hinge on motivation and then things will get interesting. I think you’ll find that motivation is very rarely relevant when we judge actions, although it may be relevant when we impose punishments.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s interesting to me how upset people here are about OP‘s motivations, as if that has any impact on the morality of the act. I think that the morality comes from how you perform the act, not whether you were doing it from an “acceptable” set of motivations. You can have an unethical surrogacy that you entered into for medical reasons only. You can have an ethical surrogacy because the idea of being pregnant seems yucky to you.

The ethics in it are about how you treat the other person, not what your decision-making process to get there is.

This, exactly.

+2

I am the PP who replied 2nd, saying that as long as the surrogate is extremely well compensated for her time and effort, and there is absolutely zero coercion, and both parties fully understand the terms of the surrogacy contract, that it's not unethical. I'm actually a legal ethicist, and this is how I would evaluate the situation from a legal standpoint. Power and consent are the key factors.

Intent/motivation is an extremely difficult factor in an ethical consideration, and usually not one we can place too much emphasis on. It's very complicated and hard to parse. OP says she wants a surrogate because of vanity and she doesn't like pregnancy. That sounds shallow to people. But what if OP has a history of eating disorders, that changes the dynamic for many people. Because suddenly OP's "intent" is more understandable. But why? Intent is such a murky area and the language we use is always imprecise. We're describing feelings and thoughts that are so personal it may be hard to convey them accurately. From an ethical standpoint, it is best to identify whether a situation can be considered ethical (or unethical) no matter what the parties' motivations. This is not always possible, but that's generally my goal.

After all, what if you decide surrogacy is ethical ONLY if the person hiring the surrogate cannot get pregnant, and then after the surrogacy is over, the surrogate reveals she only did it so that she could use the money to buy heroin for herself as she neglects her own children. Does the surrogate's motivations change the ethics of whether she should have been hired in the first place? (This is a thought experiment, I know no one would want to hire a surrogate who was addicted to herion, my point is simply that it can be very hard to police everyone's motives because they are not always apparent).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you don’t have any medical reason to do so. I just don’t want to be pregnant again, gain weight and have to try to lose it again. have my body change permanently, give birth etc.

And I can easily afford a surrogate.

Would you do it in my situation?

It is immoral and you are amoral. If I were your husband, I would divorce you and get 100% custody of children and never allow you to see them again

You people are histrionic. And honestly I think this attitude is founded in misogyny. We can and do outsource absolutely every other aspect of the human experience, and for the most part none of that is considered immoral as long as all parties are consenting and the transaction is at arms length. But for some reason gestating a pregnancy is an absolute red line that we cannot ever cross - why? Interrogate why you think pregnancy and childbirth is such a sacred part of being a mother.

Also some thought experiments here to narrow down what you think the problem is:

- is it immoral for a gay male couple to use a surrogate to have a baby?
- is it immoral for a woman who cannot get pregnant to use a surrogate? what about a woman who could get pregnant but is at high risk for complications - is use of a surrogate immoral for her?
- is it immoral for a woman who cannot carry a pregnancy to have her own egg/embryo implanted into another woman for surrogacy?
- is it immoral for a woman who cannot produce viable eggs to use donor eggs to get pregnant?
- is it immoral for an intended mother to use donor sperm to get pregnant when her partner/intended father's sperm isn't viable?
- is it immoral for a single woman to use donor sperm to become a single mother on purpose?
- is it immoral to use donor eggs/sperm in situations where the intended parent may have viable reproductive sperm/eggs, but has a genetic condition or other issue that they don't want to pass on to their children?
- is adoption immoral?

There are a thousand other shades of grey questions in between, but if you think some of these situations are fine and others are "immoral", I urge you to think about why. What bright line rule can you articulate about what is moral when it comes to reproductive technology?

Do you not get the difference between - I can't do something vs I don't wanna because of bikini season??

PP here. The questions above were intended to make you think about what *exactly* you think is immoral. If using a surrogate is okay for women who cannot carry their own pregnancy - then it's not the actual act of using a surrogate that you think is immoral. So what is it?

I only support surrogacy that is completely voluntary and the only money involved is for medical expenses or time off for birth and recovery etc. Many countries agree.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s interesting to me how upset people here are about OP‘s motivations, as if that has any impact on the morality of the act. I think that the morality comes from how you perform the act, not whether you were doing it from an “acceptable” set of motivations. You can have an unethical surrogacy that you entered into for medical reasons only. You can have an ethical surrogacy because the idea of being pregnant seems yucky to you.

The ethics in it are about how you treat the other person, not what your decision-making process to get there is.

That's because motivation absolutely bears on whether an act is moral or not, as does execution. Carving into a person's chest to perform life-saving surgery? Moral. Carving into a person's chest to watch them die? Immoral. Carving into a person's chest to perform open heart surgery even though you have no medical training? Immoral. Performing a hysterectomy because a woman has decided she doesn't want kids? Moral. Performing a hysterectomy because the government has decided that ethnic group should not reproduce? Immoral. Performing a hysterectomy in your garage because a woman has decided she doesn't want kids? Immoral.

Et cetera. The fact that morally defensible motivation is a necessary but not sufficient factor in determining morality doesn't mean that execution is the only thing that matters.

But none of your examples hinge on motivation.

Life-saving surgery is moral.
Unnecessary surgery is immoral.
Performing the procedure you’re not competent to execute is immoral.
Performing a procedure that has been requested is moral.

Not a single one of these takes the decision making process into account, nor should it. You would have to construct some pretty complicated cases to tease this one out.

What if someone performs life-saving surgeries, but they do it only for the ego rush? They’re saving lives for a bad motivation.
What if someone kills those who they sincerely believe make the world a worse place? They’re taking lives for a good motivation.

Gicome up with some cases that actually hinge on motivation and then things will get interesting. I think you’ll find that motivation is very rarely relevant when we judge actions, although it may be relevant when we impose punishments.

All of those things hinge on motivation. "Life-saving" = motivated to save the person's life. Unnecessary isn't about motivation? That's the thing you were saying people shouldn't care about in OP's case, that her desire to use surrogacy is not due to necessity but rather preference. Performing incompetently is about execution, which you are saying is all that matters. Performing it because it has been requested is again, about motivation.

You're trying to draw a distinction between "decision-making process" and motivation, and then blurring the line between decision-making process and attitude. It makes some sense because some PPs have leapt from "this is immoral" to "you're a scumbag" in talking to the OP but it's not a response to my post, but rather blurring together a bunch of previous posts. What I have said stands: Motivation is a necessary but not sufficient component of determining the morality of an action, and each of my examples shows it directly.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you don’t have any medical reason to do so. I just don’t want to be pregnant again, gain weight and have to try to lose it again. have my body change permanently, give birth etc.

And I can easily afford a surrogate.

Would you do it in my situation?

It is immoral and you are amoral. If I were your husband, I would divorce you and get 100% custody of children and never allow you to see them again

You people are histrionic. And honestly I think this attitude is founded in misogyny. We can and do outsource absolutely every other aspect of the human experience, and for the most part none of that is considered immoral as long as all parties are consenting and the transaction is at arms length. But for some reason gestating a pregnancy is an absolute red line that we cannot ever cross - why? Interrogate why you think pregnancy and childbirth is such a sacred part of being a mother.

Also some thought experiments here to narrow down what you think the problem is:

- is it immoral for a gay male couple to use a surrogate to have a baby?
- is it immoral for a woman who cannot get pregnant to use a surrogate? what about a woman who could get pregnant but is at high risk for complications - is use of a surrogate immoral for her?
- is it immoral for a woman who cannot carry a pregnancy to have her own egg/embryo implanted into another woman for surrogacy?
- is it immoral for a woman who cannot produce viable eggs to use donor eggs to get pregnant?
- is it immoral for an intended mother to use donor sperm to get pregnant when her partner/intended father's sperm isn't viable?
- is it immoral for a single woman to use donor sperm to become a single mother on purpose?
- is it immoral to use donor eggs/sperm in situations where the intended parent may have viable reproductive sperm/eggs, but has a genetic condition or other issue that they don't want to pass on to their children?
- is adoption immoral?

There are a thousand other shades of grey questions in between, but if you think some of these situations are fine and others are "immoral", I urge you to think about why. What bright line rule can you articulate about what is moral when it comes to reproductive technology?

Do you not get the difference between - I can't do something vs I don't wanna because of bikini season??

PP here. The questions above were intended to make you think about what *exactly* you think is immoral. If using a surrogate is okay for women who cannot carry their own pregnancy - then it's not the actual act of using a surrogate that you think is immoral. So what is it?

I only support surrogacy that is completely voluntary and the only money involved is for medical expenses or time off for birth and recovery etc. Many countries agree.

Ok now we're getting somewhere. Just to clarify - you support a fully voluntary surrogacy, regardless of whether the intended mother *cannot* carry her own pregnancy or simply *doesn't want* to? But you wouldn't support the same surrogacy if the surrogate was being compensated beyond loss of income and medical expenses?

So the morality for you has nothing to do with the reason for seeking a surrogate, but rather on whether the surrogacy has been commodified (by compensating the surrogate) - is that right?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s interesting to me how upset people here are about OP‘s motivations, as if that has any impact on the morality of the act. I think that the morality comes from how you perform the act, not whether you were doing it from an “acceptable” set of motivations. You can have an unethical surrogacy that you entered into for medical reasons only. You can have an ethical surrogacy because the idea of being pregnant seems yucky to you.

The ethics in it are about how you treat the other person, not what your decision-making process to get there is.

This, exactly.

+2

I am the PP who replied 2nd, saying that as long as the surrogate is extremely well compensated for her time and effort, and there is absolutely zero coercion, and both parties fully understand the terms of the surrogacy contract, that it's not unethical. I'm actually a legal ethicist, and this is how I would evaluate the situation from a legal standpoint. Power and consent are the key factors.

Intent/motivation is an extremely difficult factor in an ethical consideration, and usually not one we can place too much emphasis on. It's very complicated and hard to parse. OP says she wants a surrogate because of vanity and she doesn't like pregnancy. That sounds shallow to people. But what if OP has a history of eating disorders, that changes the dynamic for many people. Because suddenly OP's "intent" is more understandable. But why? Intent is such a murky area and the language we use is always imprecise. We're describing feelings and thoughts that are so personal it may be hard to convey them accurately. From an ethical standpoint, it is best to identify whether a situation can be considered ethical (or unethical) no matter what the parties' motivations. This is not always possible, but that's generally my goal.

After all, what if you decide surrogacy is ethical ONLY if the person hiring the surrogate cannot get pregnant, and then after the surrogacy is over, the surrogate reveals she only did it so that she could use the money to buy heroin for herself as she neglects her own children. Does the surrogate's motivations change the ethics of whether she should have been hired in the first place? (This is a thought experiment, I know no one would want to hire a surrogate who was addicted to herion, my point is simply that it can be very hard to police everyone's motives because they are not always apparent).

Isn't the payment automatically economic coercion? More money does NOT equal ethics.
But I think all Capitalism is automatically exploitative, we just have to choose what we can handle within a flawed system.

Commodifying babies is a step too far.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Babies start to bond with their mothers in the womb. So no.

What does this have to do with ethics?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you don’t have any medical reason to do so. I just don’t want to be pregnant again, gain weight and have to try to lose it again. have my body change permanently, give birth etc.

And I can easily afford a surrogate.

Would you do it in my situation?

It is immoral and you are amoral. If I were your husband, I would divorce you and get 100% custody of children and never allow you to see them again

You people are histrionic. And honestly I think this attitude is founded in misogyny. We can and do outsource absolutely every other aspect of the human experience, and for the most part none of that is considered immoral as long as all parties are consenting and the transaction is at arms length. But for some reason gestating a pregnancy is an absolute red line that we cannot ever cross - why? Interrogate why you think pregnancy and childbirth is such a sacred part of being a mother.

Also some thought experiments here to narrow down what you think the problem is:

- is it immoral for a gay male couple to use a surrogate to have a baby?
- is it immoral for a woman who cannot get pregnant to use a surrogate? what about a woman who could get pregnant but is at high risk for complications - is use of a surrogate immoral for her?
- is it immoral for a woman who cannot carry a pregnancy to have her own egg/embryo implanted into another woman for surrogacy?
- is it immoral for a woman who cannot produce viable eggs to use donor eggs to get pregnant?
- is it immoral for an intended mother to use donor sperm to get pregnant when her partner/intended father's sperm isn't viable?
- is it immoral for a single woman to use donor sperm to become a single mother on purpose?
- is it immoral to use donor eggs/sperm in situations where the intended parent may have viable reproductive sperm/eggs, but has a genetic condition or other issue that they don't want to pass on to their children?
- is adoption immoral?

There are a thousand other shades of grey questions in between, but if you think some of these situations are fine and others are "immoral", I urge you to think about why. What bright line rule can you articulate about what is moral when it comes to reproductive technology?

Do you not get the difference between - I can't do something vs I don't wanna because of bikini season??

PP here. The questions above were intended to make you think about what *exactly* you think is immoral. If using a surrogate is okay for women who cannot carry their own pregnancy - then it's not the actual act of using a surrogate that you think is immoral. So what is it?

I only support surrogacy that is completely voluntary and the only money involved is for medical expenses or time off for birth and recovery etc. Many countries agree.

Ok now we're getting somewhere. Just to clarify - you support a fully voluntary surrogacy, regardless of whether the intended mother *cannot* carry her own pregnancy or simply *doesn't want* to? But you wouldn't support the same surrogacy if the surrogate was being compensated beyond loss of income and medical expenses?

So the morality for you has nothing to do with the reason for seeking a surrogate, but rather on whether the surrogacy has been commodified (by compensating the surrogate) - is that right?

No. Motivation to exploit another person bc of vanity is disgusting morally. What's next?? I get to harvest skin from teh poors so mine can look younger??

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you don’t have any medical reason to do so. I just don’t want to be pregnant again, gain weight and have to try to lose it again. have my body change permanently, give birth etc.

And I can easily afford a surrogate.

Would you do it in my situation?

It is immoral and you are amoral. If I were your husband, I would divorce you and get 100% custody of children and never allow you to see them again

You people are histrionic. And honestly I think this attitude is founded in misogyny. We can and do outsource absolutely every other aspect of the human experience, and for the most part none of that is considered immoral as long as all parties are consenting and the transaction is at arms length. But for some reason gestating a pregnancy is an absolute red line that we cannot ever cross - why? Interrogate why you think pregnancy and childbirth is such a sacred part of being a mother.

Also some thought experiments here to narrow down what you think the problem is:

- is it immoral for a gay male couple to use a surrogate to have a baby?
- is it immoral for a woman who cannot get pregnant to use a surrogate? what about a woman who could get pregnant but is at high risk for complications - is use of a surrogate immoral for her?
- is it immoral for a woman who cannot carry a pregnancy to have her own egg/embryo implanted into another woman for surrogacy?
- is it immoral for a woman who cannot produce viable eggs to use donor eggs to get pregnant?
- is it immoral for an intended mother to use donor sperm to get pregnant when her partner/intended father's sperm isn't viable?
- is it immoral for a single woman to use donor sperm to become a single mother on purpose?
- is it immoral to use donor eggs/sperm in situations where the intended parent may have viable reproductive sperm/eggs, but has a genetic condition or other issue that they don't want to pass on to their children?
- is adoption immoral?

There are a thousand other shades of grey questions in between, but if you think some of these situations are fine and others are "immoral", I urge you to think about why. What bright line rule can you articulate about what is moral when it comes to reproductive technology?

Do you not get the difference between - I can't do something vs I don't wanna because of bikini season??

PP here. The questions above were intended to make you think about what *exactly* you think is immoral. If using a surrogate is okay for women who cannot carry their own pregnancy - then it's not the actual act of using a surrogate that you think is immoral. So what is it?

I only support surrogacy that is completely voluntary and the only money involved is for medical expenses or time off for birth and recovery etc. Many countries agree.

Ok now we're getting somewhere. Just to clarify - you support a fully voluntary surrogacy, regardless of whether the intended mother *cannot* carry her own pregnancy or simply *doesn't want* to? But you wouldn't support the same surrogacy if the surrogate was being compensated beyond loss of income and medical expenses?

So the morality for you has nothing to do with the reason for seeking a surrogate, but rather on whether the surrogacy has been commodified (by compensating the surrogate) - is that right?

No. Motivation to exploit another person bc of vanity is disgusting morally. What's next?? I get to harvest skin from teh poors so mine can look younger??

Are you the PP who said you support fully voluntary, non-compensated surrogacy? Because if so this seems contradictory.

Assuming you're a different poster, it sounds like for you the moral line is about the motive - is that right? So surrogacy is moral for an intended mother cannot physically or medically carry her own pregnancy, but if the intended mother is capable but just doesn't want to carry a pregnancy, it's immoral. Is that right?