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Is Paid Surrogacy a Form of Reproductive Prostitution? A Kantian Perspective

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 December 2017

TATIANA PATRONE
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Abstract:

This article reexamines the “prostitution objection” to paid surrogacy, and argues that rebuttals to this objection fail to focus on surrogates as embodied persons. This failure is based on the false distinction between “selling one’s reproductive services” and “selling one’s body.” To ground the analysis of humans as embodied persons, this article uses Kant’s late ethical theory, which develops the conceptual framework for understanding human beings as embodied selves. Literature on surrogacy commonly emphasizes that all Kantian duties heed to the categorical prohibition to treat persons as mere means. What this literature leaves out is that this imperative commands us more specifically to engage ourselves and others as embodied persons. This article aims to relate this point to a specific issue in assisted reproduction. It argues that a Kantian account of human beings as embodied persons prohibits paid surrogacy on exactly the same grounds as it prohibits prostitution.

Keywords

surrogacyprostitutionassisted reproductionKantembodiment
Type
Special Section: Open Forum
Information
Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics , Volume 27 , Issue 1 , January 2018 , pp. 109 - 122
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

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References

Notes

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2. See note 1, Koch 2012, at 13.

3. See note 1, Koch 2012, at 17–8.

4. Kant I, Grundlegung zur Metaphysic der Sitten (Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals; hereafter GMS). Göttingen: Philipp Reclam jun.; 2004, at 4:429. All writings of Immanuel Kant are cited by the volume and page number of the Akademie Edition (AA): Immanuel Kants gesammelte Schriften, Ausgabe der kӧniglish preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. Berlin: W. d. Gruyter; 1902–. Unless otherwise noted, translations are my own.

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11. See note 5, Ketchum 1992, at 286.

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14. See note 13, Damelio, Sorensen 2008, at 271.

15. See note 4, Kant GMS 2004, at 4:428.

16. See note 4, Kant GMS 2004, at 4:427.

17. Kant I. Die Metaphysik der Sitten (The Metaphysics of Morals; hereafter MS). Stuttgart: Philipp Reclam jun.; 1990, at 6:462.

18. See note 17, Kant MS 1990, at 6:424.

19. See note 17, Kant MS 1990, at 6:425.

20. Barbara Herman argues that Kant’s account of marriage—as the social institution that makes rightful sexual relations possible—is akin to his account of civil society. “Our sexual need for and use of one another requires a political institution of marriage” as a framework for this relationship to be rightful (Herman B. Could it be worth thinking about Kant on sex and marriage? In: Antony LM, Witt CE, eds. A Mind of One’s Own: Feminist Essays on Reason and Objectivity. Cambridge, MA: Westview Press; 2001:53–72, at 57). Much like a civil society is needed to make property relations possible (insofar as they are rightful), the institution of marriage allows us to establish rightful relations that are based on “sexual impulse.”

21. See note 17, Kant MS 1990, at 6:278.

22. See note 17, Kant MS 1990, at 6:278.

23. See note 17, Kant MS 1990, at 6:278 (emphasis added).

24. Kant I (Heath P, Schneewind JB, eds.) Lectures on Ethics. Cambridge University Press, 1997, at V-Mo/Collins, 27:386. Kant’s lecture notes “Collins” (which can be found in volume 27 of the Akademie edition) date to the lectures that Kant gave on ethics in 1784–85. Although Collins is most likely to have purchased these lectures, as they would have been available for purchase in Königsberg at the time, and not have taken these notes himself, the title of Kant’s work bears his name: Moralphilosophie Collins (Moral Philosophy: Collins’s Lecture Notes). These notes contain Kant’s much earlier views on ethics (or what later became his “metaphysis of morals”), but they have a striking resemblance to Kant’s “Doctrine of Virtue” of 1797. On Moralphilosophie Collins, see Denis L, Sensen O, eds. Kant’s Lectures on Ethics: A Critical Guide. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 2015.

25. See note 4, Kant GMS 2004, at 4:428.

26. See note 24, Kant 1997, at V-Mo/Collins 27:387.

27. See note 24, Kant 1997, at V-Mo/Collins 27:387–8.

28. See note 24, Kant 1997, at V-Mo/Collins 27:387.

29. See note 17, Kant MS 1990, at 6:278.

30. See note 17, Kant MS 1990, at 6:419.

31. Herman comments on Kant’s argument in the following way: “I am here less interested in defending the odd metaphysics of Kant’s claims about parts and wholes than I am in making the fact that just such views about sexual use are integral to the kind of feminist argument both Dworkin and MacKinnon present. Their central programmatic task is to demonstrate that the effect of sexual regard or relationship cannot be partial—mere sex—but that the very categories of gender, of who we are as men and women, are functions of objectifying sexual regard.” See note 20, Herman 2001, at 64.

32. See note 17, Kant MS 1990, at 6:419.

33. See note 13, Damelio, Sorensen 2008, at 273–5.

34. See note 13, Damelio, Sorensen 2008, at 275–7.

35. See Wilkinson, S. Exploitation in international paid surrogacy arrangements. Journal of Applied Philosophy 2016;33(2):125–45.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed