Surrogacy is the commissioning of a woman to gestate and give birth to a child for another would-be parent. The practice raises several ethical questions, such as the commodification of the surrogate and of the baby, and the exploitation of the surrogate, issues which have been extensively debated. This book offers a fresh take on surrogacy, by concentrating on questions which bear on its justifiability: Is providing gestational services a permissible way of employing a woman's body? Indeed, is it a legitimate form of work? Are the children born out of surrogacy in any way wronged by surrogacy agreements?In the first part of the book, Christine Straehle proposes an account of surrogacy work as legitimate work for women, as a way to realize certain goals in women's lives through the fruit of their labour. She defends a right to become a surrogate as necessary to protect women's autonomy. Anca Gheaus criticises surrogacy by arguing that it always wrongs children--whether or not it also harms them--by disrespecting them; therefore, gestational services are impermissible. In the second part, Straehle responds to Gheaus, questioning that children are wronged by the practice of surrogacy. Instead, she defends an intentional model of parental rights, which indicates that having a child through surrogacy should count as a ground to assign parental rights. In her response, Gheaus objects that Straehle's view fails to properly account for the interests of either surrogates or children. However, she accepts that women may gestate without the intention to have custody over the newborn, and is therefore open to some kind of post-surrogacy practice that would radically depart, in the allocation of legal parenthood, from any historical or currently proposed form of surrogacy.

Introduction, Anca Gheaus and Christine StraehleSurrogacy definedSurrogacy and The LawEthical Worries Surrounding SurrogacyThe BookPart One:Defending Surrogacy as Reproductive Labour, Christine StraehleIntroductionI. Surrogacy and Free Occupational ChoiceI.1. Why is freedom of occupational choice important in liberal theory?I.2. Two Justifications for the Right to Freedom of Occupational ChoiceII. Surrogacy, Autonomy and Individual AgencyII.1. Reasons for Limits: Harm to Self, Harm to Society and ProfessionalizationII. 2. Surrogacy and the Limits of Freedom of Professional ChoiceIII. Surrogacy, Commercialization, Reproduction and ParentingIII.1. Surrogacy as Commercialization vs Surrogacy as ParentingIII.2. Surrogacy and gendered societyIII.3. Surrogacy as Harm to Society: applying market norms to the family sphereIV. Surrogacy As WorkIV.1. Professional requirements and justifiable limitsIV. 2. Surrogacy as licensed workConclusionNotesAgainst Private Surrogacy: A Child-Centered View, Anca GheausI. IntroductionII. The intuitive case against surrogacyIII. Parents, their rights, and the interests of childrenIII.1. General assumptionsIII.2. The right to become a parentIII.3. Parents' rights and children's interestsIII. 4. Two caveatsIV. What is surrogacy? Three modelsIV.1. The child-trafficking modelIV.2. The privately arranged adoption modelIV.3. The provision of services and gametes modelV. Full Surrogacy with intending parents' gametesV.1. Child-centered appeals to genetic connections and the right to parentV.3. Appeals to the gestational connectionV.4. Creatures of attachment: the general impermissibility of surrogacy agreementsVI. Harm to children? The challenge from the non-identity problemVII. Conclusion: a respectful and humane form of surrogacyNotesPart TwoWhat's in it for the Baby? - Weighing Children's and Parents' Interests in Commercial Surrogacy Agreements - A Reply to Gheaus, Christine StraehleI. IntroductionII. Where we agree: The interests of childrenIII. Where we disagree: RelationshipsIV. Where we disagree: the role of the stateConclusionNotesWomen and Children First - A Reply to Straehle, Anca GheausI. IntroductionII. Where we agree: gestating for anotherIII. Where we disagree: the womenIV. Where we disagree: the childrenV. Is Straehle's hybrid defence of surrogacy stable?ConclusionsNotesIndex