Defending Surrogacy as Reproductive Labour

Abstract In this chapter, Straehle proposes her positive argument for remunerated, or commercial, surrogacy. The core of this positive argument is built on three parts: (a) working as a surrogate is a legitimate employment of a woman’s body for labour; (b) surrogacy, when properly codified in (international) private law, can serve as a means for women surrogates to realize important goals in their lives; and (c) surrogacy creates a life and helps couples who are unable to have biological children to become and be parents of biological children. Straehle first establishes the freedom of occupational choice argument, explaining why freedom of occupational choice is an important aspect of many accounts of individual autonomy and self-determination. In section 2, Straehle provides an account of individual autonomy underlying her argument for freedom of occupational choice, and shows how we can think of surrogacy as autonomously chosen. In section 3, Straehle engages with critics of commercial surrogacy, arguing against the criticism of commercial surrogacy as introducing market values into the sphere of the family. Instead, Straehle notes that in an age of markets in reproductive technologies, the only thing critics seem to want to have for free is women’s labour. In the last section, Straehle delineates a model of a morally justifiable codification of commercial surrogacy, setting out the expectations that partners in surrogacy agreements can plausibly have towards each other.