Altruistic surrogacy and informed consent.

Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell Country of Publication: England NLM ID: 8704792 Publication Model: Print Cited Medium: Print ISSN: 0269-9702 (Print) Linking ISSN: 02699702 NLM ISO Abbreviation: Bioethics

Publication: Oxford : Wiley-Blackwell
Original Publication: Oxford ; New York : Basil Blackwell, c1987-

Ethics* ; Freedom* ; Informed Consent* ; Maternal-Fetal Relations* ; Personal Autonomy* ; Psychology* ; Surrogate Mothers*; Altruism ; Cognition ; Comprehension ; Decision Making ; Disclosure ; Female ; Humans ; Mental Competency ; Risk ; Risk Assessment ; Stress, Psychological ; Women

A crucial premise in many recent arguments against the moral permissibility of surrogate motherhood arrangements is the claim that a woman cannot autonomously consent to gestating and relinquishing a child to another couple, because she cannot be fully informed about what her future emotional responses will be to the foetus developing within her, and to the giving up of the newborn infant to its social parents. When conjoined with some moral principle about the justifiable limits on the ways others can be expected to exercise their autonomy on our behalf, this claim is often taken to establish that various forms of surrogate motherhood arrangements are morally wrong. In this paper I want to show that there is a serious non sequitur in this kind of argument. That is, I want to show that even if women cannot in fact have this kind of information about what their future emotional responses to pregnancy and relinquishment will be, nothing follows about the wrongness or otherwise of surrogacy. For, when we consider what counts as informed consent in the context of other important ventures with uncertain consequences, it becomes clear that informed consent does not require having this kind of information about one's future emotional states. In putting these arguments, I also hope to clarify some of the connections which might be thought to hold between informed consent and autonomous decision-making generally.

Indexing Agency: KIE Local ID #: 39379.
Keywords: Analytical Approach; Genetics and Reproduction; Professional Patient Relationship
Note: 30 fn. Note: KIE BoB Subject Heading: informed consent Note: KIE BoB Subject Heading: surrogate mothers

Date Created: 19921001 Date Completed: 19930616 Latest Revision: 20191105

20231215

10.1111/j.1467-8519.1992.tb00206.x

11652090