Bioethics in Faith and Practice, Volume 2, Number 1

Bioethics in Faith and Practice ⦁ 2016 ⦁ Volume 2 ⦁ Number 1 27 It (the IVF treatment) is embarrassing. You leave your pride on the hospital door when you walk in and pick it up when you leave. You feel like a piece of meat in the meat- works. But if you want a baby badly enough you’ll do it . viii Another noteworthy aspect of the embodiment significance of procreation is related to what the Vatican calls “the special nature of transmission of human life in marriage.” Here the appeal is to a natural law conception because it not only separates procreation from sex but it also disembodies conception, gestation, birthing, and parenting. Surrogacy separates procreation from the integrally personal context of the conjugal act by putting the sacred moment of conception into the sterile and cold environment of a petri dish. The child is manufactured in a laboratory. Surrogacy creates a distance between natural events of procreation so that these events are no longer viewed as points along a continuum but as discrete occurrences that can be compartmentalized and separated from each other. These events cannot be separated without profound effect on the personhood of those involved and on the community’s conception of personhood. “Gilbert Meilaender observes, as we remove the creation of new life further and further from the natural reality of male and female sexual union, children become our product, our project, or our possession.” ix 2. Procreation in the Context of the Family The scriptural directive is not simply procreation but procreation within the context of a family. Scripture states, “Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother and cleave unto his wife and they shall be one flesh” (Genesis 2:24). The meaning of the term “one flesh” is not immediately obvious. It might well be understood in a figurative manner as referring to the coital union of male and female. However, Rashi, the classical eleventh-century biblical exegete, understands the term as a quite literal reference to a “single flesh,” viz ., the child born of the union of man and wife. He comments, “The child is created by both and [in the child] their flesh becomes one. ” x The scriptural reference is not to the simple mating of male and female for purposes of conception; that could readily be accomplished without either party leaving his or her parental domicile. “Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother” depicts a man’s permanent abandonment of the parental home in anticipation of establishing a new marital domicile with the wife to whom he cleaves. The reference to family is quite obvious. Not only is there a reference to establishment of a new family for the purpose of conceiving and nurturing a child but there is a concomitant reference to leaving father and mother, i.e., the parental in which the presence of the son signifies the existence of a family unity. Thus, Scripture explicitly portrays propagation of the species as the telos, of and hence the value reflected in, the family as an institution. Surrogacy infringes on the child’s right to be born of a father and mother known to him and bound to each other by marriage. According to the Alabama Law Review, in gestational surrogacy agreements, “there are at least three potential females who may claim maternal rights: the surrogate, the genetic donor, and the intended mother, with up to eight different potential parents in a gestational surrogacy contract. ” xi Surrogacy brings an inherent causal perspective on the conception diminishing the moral principle in which the marital commitment of the husband and wife establishes a family through becoming “one flesh”. An oft-quoted rabbinic dictum provides a basic ethical principle of the parental obligation parents have to the children to which they “give life”. The Gemara says, “He who gives life gives sustenance” (Ta’anit 8b). This proverb is an affirmation of faith in the divine commitment to the human race. The resulting principle is that the one who bestows the gift of life undertakes the responsibility to provide the necessities of existence. Surrogacy, on the other hand, brings an inherent causal perspective on parental obligations