Surrogacy : women’s empowerment or exploitation?

Abstract

Throughout the decades, surrogacy services have gradually developed into a prevalent way for childless couples to start a family. The possibility of a woman experiencing pregnancy to give birth to another person's child challenges customary thoughts of parenthood and has numerous ethical and moral repercussions. Hailed by some as bursting with potential, it has likewise been an intensely debated issue in legal and bioethical spheres. It has been widely disapproved on the grounds that it disregards the human rights and dignity of the surrogates and it commodifies both women and children. The proponents of surrogacy nonetheless contend that the right to procreate is an essential human right and that it incorporates the right to reproduce with the help of another. Every individual therefore, has the right to profit by the advancements in science and technology and every woman has a right to a reproductive autonomy which includes the right to act as a surrogate for another. Hence, any confinement on the act of surrogacy would damage the fundamental human right of the intended guardians in addition to those of the surrogate woman. Numerous jurisdictions have no regulation on surrogacy services. In the absence of particular legal standards that elucidate parenthood following surrogacy, however, the outcome is frequently vulnerability in connection to the legal parental status of the surrogate mother, her spouse, any donors, and the intended guardians, leaving the status of the child born through surrogacy ambiguous. In the end this thesis concludes that, although on the surface surrogate motherhood seems harmless it does affect the life of more than just one person. Furthermore, although it is really painful for the infertile couples to remain shunned from having a child of their own, but as it has been from ages, the interest of society shall prevail over the individual interest and so it’s needed that we may secure the future of children’s by making all surrogacy arrangements illegal including cross border surrogacy.