Bioethics in Faith and Practice, Volume 2, Number 1

28 Lones ⦁ A Christian Ethical Perspective on Surrogacy diminishing the moral principle of providing the necessities of existence to the children one gives the gift of life. In bringing any child into the world, the parents put the child at risk of harm. The child is extremely disadvantaged and highly vulnerable to a vast range of physical and psychological injuries as the result of being born. Because they have exposed the child to that risk, the parents have at least a prima facie obligation to protect the child and to provide the necessities of life for the child. Furthermore, they may not transfer their parental duties to another caretaker simply as a matter of choice, for it is the child who holds the claim against both biological mother and father, and the child cannot release them . xii However, a surrogate mother does not assume personal responsibility for her momentous personal action of the gestation of a new life. If fact, the surrogate mother is to abdicate all future personal responsibility. “Parental responsibility is an essential form of the natural responsibility human beings have to help each other, and it gives rise to moral claims not governed by specific contracts or commitments.” xiii 3. Children as Cherished Gifts Not Commodities The power of our technologies and the images they generate can turn children from persons to pets to consumable accessories, and each step is taken with our consent and approval (Shuman & Volck, pg. 762). However, Psalm 127:3 asks: “Don’t you see that children are God’s best gift? The fruit of the womb His generous legacy?” Wanting and welcoming children is a good thing, yet they are never “ours” in any real sense. Our care and responsibility for our children does not equal ownership. Children are “persons” whom God has given us the stewardship responsibility to welcome into our home in order to nurture and protect them as they develop into the person God created them to be. Surrogacy blurs the stewardship responsibility a parent inherently should have for their biological child. Consequently, the distinction between genetic, biological, and social parenthood has led to separating individuals involved by their different roles as multiple persons may take part in the process of creating and raising a new life. The contracts involved in the surrogacy relationship attempt to clarify these responsibilities but in reality only results in commodifying the child. Daniel S. McConchie in his article for The Center of Bioethics and Human Dignity, An Ethical Perspective on Reproductive Technologies, speaks to these problematic commercial arrangements: “Like the selling of organs, such arrangements wrongly commercialize the body. In fact, financial contracts essentially entail the purchasing the baby and imply an unacceptable form of ownership of human beings. Less problematic are altruistic surrogacies such as rescue surrogacies where a woman acts to save an embryo that would otherwise be destroyed. ” xiv Why should a child, at its very conception, be treated as property, a product, or a means to satisfy the wishes of self-serving adults? Some things are not to be commodified and commercialized. Verhey gives three warnings concerning the commodification of certain things: xv • Sometimes what is good cannot remain quite the same good if commodified and commercialized. Commodification of procreation will distort, corrupt, and demean all those involved, especially the child. • Commodification can corrupt community. Commodification can risk rupturing the fabric of the common life. If we do not block some exchanges, we may risk corrupting, demeaning, or distorting relations in community. • Commodification can distort our rhetoric, the way we think of and talk of morality and ourselves. Surrogacy, instead of welcoming children as a stewardship gift from God, commodifies them as a means to an end. In the words of one author,