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.
