Surrogacy and the Fiction of Medical Necessity

Baron, Teresa

Abstract

A number of countries and states prohibit surrogacy except in cases of "medical necessity" or for those with specific medical conditions. Healthcare providers in some countries have similar policies restricting the provision of clinical assistance in surrogacy. This paper argues that surrogacy is never medically necessary in any ordinary understanding of this term. The author aims to show first that surrogacy per se is a socio-legal intervention and not a medical one and, second, that the intervention in question does not treat, prevent, or mitigate any actual or potential harm to health. Legal regulations and healthcare-provider policies of this kind therefore codify a fiction-one which both obscures the socio-legal motivations for surrogacy and inhibits critical examination of those motivations while mobilizing normative connotations of appeals to medical need. The persisting distinction, in law and in moral discourse, between "social" and "medical" surrogacy, is unjustified.

Citation

Baron, T. (2024). Surrogacy and the Fiction of Medical Necessity. Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics, 33(1), 40-47. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0963180123000269

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Apr 10, 2023
• Online Publication Date: May 12, 2023
• Publication Date: 2024-01
• Deposit Date: Feb 26, 2024
• Publicly Available Date: Feb 26, 2024
• Journal: Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics
• Print ISSN: 0963-1801
• Electronic ISSN: 1469-2147
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 33
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 40-47
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0963180123000269
• Keywords: surrogacy, Healthcare policies, legal regulations, medical necessity
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/21363498
• Publisher URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/cambridge-quarterly-of-healthcare-ethics/article/surrogacy-and-the-fiction-of-medical-necessity/A799FCD541D4F6220F7C5996826C4727