Some More Thoughts About Surrogacy and Abortion |
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Some More Thoughts About Surrogacy and Abortion
Josh Blackman | 8.14.2026 10:16 AM
My post yesterday on surrogacy and abortion has generated many responses, as I had suspected. Surrogacy is one of those issues that conservatives simply don't want to talk about. It is often heart-wrenching when couples are not able to have children, and IVF and surrogacy are viewed as miracles to let these couples have children. To raise any moral or legal objections to this practice is sometimes seen as a third-rail, even in Republican pro-life circles. And on the left, how many of the women who wore bonnets from the Handmaid's Tale to protest Justice Barrett hired poor women in Eastern Europe to carry their children? This is an issue that needs to be discussed more on both sides of the spectrum.
Here, I'd like to offer a few more thoughts.
To start, the terminology is important. In my earlier post, I used the phrase "biological parents" to refer to the couple that established the surrogacy contract, and the "surrogate mother" to refer to the woman that carries the child to term. I don't think these terms are precise enough.
Surrogacy can take many different forms. In some cases, the fertilized embryo includes biological material from both the male and female who establish the surrogacy contract. In other cases, the fertilized embryo includes the biological material from one member of the surrogacy contract (the male or the female). And in rarer cases, the fertilized embryo consists of material from a male and female donor, and includes no biological material from the couple that established the surrogacy contract. And in super-rare cases, there are three people who contribute biological materials. I'm not sure what the right terminology is, but "biological parents" is not always accurate.
I also don't like the phrase "surrogate mother" as that presumes the woman's only relationship with the child is the contract. In some cases, the woman carrying the child to term had her own egg fertilized, so she does have a biological connection to the child, even if the surrogacy........