Should she be forced to continue the pregnancy? I would say no, but the couple should be able to sue her for not fulfilling the contract and they, not the surrogate, should determine how the aborted material will be disposed of. They might want to donate the tissue to stem cell research for example or even bury it in the family cemetary plot. The issue of the epidural should have been worked out in the surrogacy agreement. If the couple didn’t bother to preclude epidurals, the surrogate should be free to have one. However, if the surrogate agreed no epidurals, it’s no epidurals unless absolutely medically necessary (I don’t know enough about child birth to know if epiderals are ever medically necessary).
zpg zealot,
how would you feel about having a pool of women to rent out as slaves, their wombs and reproductive organs would be the property of another
In other words a return to the United States prior to Roe vs. Wade. The reason I am pro-choice is I don’t believe women should be slaves to their uteruses. Pregnancy and surrogacy create a unique legal relationship between groups of people which is why there needs a lot of regulation. In an ideal world most of the problems here could have been avoided by laws that freed the genetic parents of any legal and therefore financial responsibility for the child that resulted in this pregnancy and allowed them to recup their costs to the surrogate, but until those laws exist strictly enforcing the aboriton clause is the only fair alternative.
So forced surgery=good, offered handshake=rape.
I think its clear he i not prochoice…he is pro women doing what he wants
No he’s pro-women living up to their responsibilities and abiding by the contracts they enter. The surrogate didn’t get pregnant by rape or by a birth control failure. She very deliberately choose to get pregnant under the specifications laid out in the contract she freely choose to sign. She should be forced to either abide by the contract or pay the full legal penalties for breaking it which should include full financial restitution to the couple for the money they have spent on her and full financial freedom for the couple in regard to the child whose birth they did not consent to.
Four words in your post stand out…“she should be forced”…these four words tell me how u feel about women
But if the issue for you is living up to the contract freely entered into by the surrogate, why should she not be forced to continue in the pregnancy and give birth to the child? Why do you feel that forced abortion is enforceable, but not forced pregnancy and delivery?
The intended parents have no authority over the surrogates medical care. They can assert authority over the baby’s medical care once born, but while the fetus is inside the body of the surrogate they have no authority over where she travels, what she eats or what medical care she receives. They could contract not to pay for an epidural, certainly, but they get no authority of her medical care during the birth process or during the pregnancy. They don’t get to decide if she gets an epidural or not. They can make requests, sure. Contracting to have authority over someone’s medical care if they are not somehow incapacitated is generally not legal or legally enforceable.
Property rights of the intended parents of the embryo are valid when the embryo is not implanted in anybody’s body, attached to their biological processes. Custody rights or parental rights of a baby once born (or aborted fetal tissue :rolleyes:), SURE. Any rights or authority over the biological processes and body autonomy of the surrogate after implantation up to the severing of the umbilical cord? NO
Which is why experienced surrogates demand a higher rate than first time surrogates. They have a proven track record of producing a healthy baby, not running off with the baby or challenging custody, not drinking or doing drugs, etc.
“Caveat emptor”
true, But zpg zealot feels if you hire a surrogate you own her a**
Basically because abortion is the lesser evasive procedure in terms of societal cost. It simpley returns the situation to square one of the pre-surrogracy status quo. One less baby isn’t really a problem. Overpopulation is.
Living in a civilized society means we are all forced to do things we do not want to like obey the law and honor the contracts we enter into. Surely, you don’t think it is a bad thing that the surrogate is also forced not to drive drunk, not to shoplift, not to rape or abuse children, etc.? By the way I am a woman, and stupid bints like this surrogate make me want to apologize for my gender sometimes.
No more than you own the a** of any other professional contractor you hire to do work. If I hire a crew of workers to put in a new drive way; then decide not have the work down, I expect them to stop working and leave my property. If they don’t having decided that it’s “god’s will” they put in a drive way, I expect the police to stop them from working and possibly arrest them for trespassing.
This is a backwards example. This example would be more consistent if in the scenario the contractors decide they dont want to put in a driveway. The legal consequence would be they would not get paid but you could not force them at gunpoint to put your driveway in.
Same with other situations,for example if an actress decides she doesnt want to act in a movie, tge sheriff doesnt chain her to the set and whip her until she acts out the scene, if a doctor is hired to perform surgery but decides he is sick of surgery you cannot hold a gun to his head and command hom to operate. Its really kind of bizarre you dont get this
I don’t see as a remotely backwards example. The surrogate signed a contract to perform a certain job, in this case gestating a fetus. When the clients became aware that the fetus had severe physical defects as per the already agreed upon contract, they wanted the surrogate to discontinue the work (i.e., have an abortion). It’s really kind of bizarre you don’t get that this surrogate freely signed a contract in which she agreed to have an abortion under certain circumstances and when those circumstances occurred, she tried to default. The actress who defaults on her movie contract doesn’t get to keep props, costumes, or other material goods from the part. Actually under certain circumstances (usually life threatening) doctors can be legally forced to peform surgery or face some very nasty legal consequences.
Situtations like this are why I feel surrogacy if it’s going to exist has to have some tough, uniform regulation.
Of course I get that she entered a contract,but people in a civilized society have a right to change their mind. While they might have to repay certain monies the person is nnot physically forced to perform the contracted action…do you honestly feel people who opt out of performing a contracted service should be physicaly forced to do it? Then a consistent belief with this would be a man in nevada hires a prostitute and if she changes her mind then he can legally use physical force to make her carry out the sex act. He paid for her body and according to your position, she cannot change her mind,she can legally be forced to do so. Scary as hell kind of thinking
I find it scary as hell kind of thinking that someone believes it’s all right to force financial parenthood on someone for a birth they didn’t agree to. In an ideal world the better option would be for the breach of contract to free the couple from all financial responsibilities involving the surrogate and the product of her womb and allow the couple to sue for the compensation for the funds they have wasted on the surrogate. That would be the best solution. But if this solution is not going to be made available, the next fair solution is to require the contract to be fulfilled. The prostitute in Nevada can legally refuse the john, but she can’t keep the money. Likewise if Ms. Surrogate doesn’t want to abide by the contract she can return the genetic material.
So if your position is the prostitute can refuse to carry out the act, then so can the surrogate,but both have to return any monies.
What you don’t seem to get is that you can not legally enforce a contract that has a legally unenforceable clause. It is not legal to force a woman to abort for any reason in the US, not even to save her own life. Therefore, the clause mandating abortion is unenforceable. Financial penalties, such as “give back the surrogacy fee” and making the less than perfect child the legal responsibility of the surrogate would be enforceable. The problem here is that the contract was poorly written.
Now, in some other country the clause mandating abortion might be enforceable. In that case tying a woman down and forcibly removing a fetus from her body might be entirely legal. Whether someone considers it moral or not is a different question.