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By DR ROBERT POLLNITZ

I believe that surrogacy has major ethical problems

The child as commodity:

Australian assisted reproductive technology (ART) laws claim that the paramount concern shall be the welfare of the child to be created. However, when one looks at how ART and surrogacy work in practice, it is evident that the baby is seen as a commodity, as a consumer good to be provided to anyone who wants one. Our discrimination laws ensure that singles and homosexual couples can claim the right to have a child by ART and surrogacy and adoption.

No ‘right to a child’:

Since children are not property to be owned, I would argue that no-one can claim the right to have a child. Our ART laws were originally designed to help infertile heterosexual married couples to have a child, but even they cannot claim “the right to a child”. Parents are the custodians of their children, and I believe that nobody can claim the right to a child in the same way that no person can claim ownership of another person.

Surrogacy and adoption:

Surrogacy has been compared with adoption, but there is a key difference. Adoption is a child-centred practice in which a couple takes into their home and their hearts a baby already conceived or born. In contrast, surrogacy is an adult-centred practice in which a baby is deliberately conceived and born to be given away.

Distortion of mother-child bond:

The Warnock report on surrogacy to the British Government stated – “There is an implied attack on the value of parental relationships by the introduction of a third party into the process of procreation, there is a distortion of the relationship between the mother and the child in surrogacy, there is a difference between the single act of semen donation and the more intimate and personal role of gestation, and there is the degradation to the child who is ‘bought’.”

Loss of identity:

Surrogacy can create complex patterns, with it being possible for a child to have as many as six parents – the genetic mother who provides the egg, the gestating mother who carries the pregnancy, the social mother who rears the child, the genetic father who provides the sperm, the legal father (the husband of the woman who gives birth), and the social father who rears the child.

Australian ethicist Nicholas Tonti-Filippini writes similarly – “Surrogacy sets up a matrix in which no-one has that particular relationship to the child of being genetically, gestationally and as a consequence socially related to the child. Parenthood is too hard a battle to entrust to any weaker form of bonding.”

Impact of surrogacy on the children of the surrogate mother:

In my work as a pediatrician, I have found that children generally do not cope well with the loss of a sibling, with their grief extending into fear and anxiety and depression. Children up to the age of about seven years cannot begin to understand the concept of surrogacy, but they do know when their Mum is having a baby, their baby. Their thinking is likely to be – “Our baby cried and Mummy gave her away. When will Mummy give me away?” My experience suggests that counselling will not be able to manage such adverse emotional reactions in young children of a surrogate mother.

Pressure on surrogate mother:

Women may agree to serve as altruistic surrogate mothers because they wish to help a sister or a friend, and they wish to be seen as generous loving people. However, I believe that within families there can be an element of emotional blackmail in such situations. Such subtle forms of duress can easily be concealed from counsellors. I note that in some ethnic groups the more a woman sacrifices herself the more she will be praised, no matter how much she hurts herself in the process.

Overseas experience with commercial surrogacy indicates that women who rent their wombs often do so out of poverty. A woman is not exercising true freedom of choice when she prefers being exploited to being poor.

Same-sex and single surrogacy:

As outlined earlier, I believe that no-one has “the right to a child”, and I would urge that the focus in this area should be genuinely on the best interests of the child. My views on this issue are shaped by over 30 years experience as a specialist paediatrician. Throughout this time I have found that children develop best, both physically and emotionally, when they are reared in a stable heterosexual Mum and Dad family. Without criticising single parents or making judgements about people’s situations or experiences, when families fracture we see large increases in health problems, emotional imbalances, learning disorders, defiant behaviours, drug use, sexual promiscuity, and criminality.

Flawed research:

Homosexual activists claim that gay and lesbian parenting is as successful as that of heterosexual couples. I have read the studies they quote and find they are either inconclusive or subject to major methodological flaws. In contrast, there is a large body of social science evidence to support the view that children are best raised by their own mother and father. This is not a new concept – for at least 5,000 years enduring societies have valued traditional marriage between a man and a woman as the social nucleus in which children are best born and raised.

The child’s interests, not adult interests:

In the best interests of the child, I would urge that surrogacy parentage orders not be extended to singles and same-sex couples. I believe that our children are too important to be treated as social guinea pigs to appease the demands of a tiny if vocal minority.

Another ‘stolen generation’ from surrogacy?:

When my paediatric colleague Professor Fiona Stanley was Australian of the Year in 2003 she spoke of the crisis proportions of children in our society damaged by family dysfunction, and of the urgent need for all of us to examine closely whether our policies and legislation are supportive of families.

I believe that legalising surrogacy carries the risk of creating another “stolen generation”, like those children of adoption and artificial insemination who feel a deep unmet need to know their lost biological parents and possible siblings.

DR ROBERT POLLNITZ