MOST people assume that if you create a child, it is your child. But the links between creation, commission and child-rearing are growing more tenuous as reproductive technology advances and laws are reformed in response. In the coming decades, we might see the first children conceived using synthetic eggs and and 鈥渂orn鈥� through (artificial womb technology). How we respond to these advances will depend on what we do, between now and then, with the relationship between procreation and parenthood.
Since 2017, law reform bodies in England, Scotland and Wales have been refining proposals for a reform of surrogacy laws in these countries. Motivations include making surrogacy more accessible and less legally precarious, and clarifying ambiguities such as commercial payments for surrogacy. This is currently illegal in the UK, in theory: you can only pay a surrogate 鈥渞easonable expenses鈥�. But no parental application has yet been denied on this basis, leading the UK has de facto commercial surrogacy already. Legalising it would nudge laws in England, Scotland and Wales further from patterns seen across the EU and closer to models in and .
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As a researcher in the philosophy of parenthood and reproductive ethics, my attention has focused on the proposal to lift, in some cases, the requirement for one or both commissioning parents to provide an egg/sperm. The practice of double donor surrogacy (DDS) would allow couples to commission surrogates to conceive a child using a donor egg (or their own) and donor sperm.
A handful of countries and states currently allow this: in and , a single woman or couple can commission a surrogate to conceive with eggs and sperm from anonymous donors. Legal parentage is determined on an entirely contractual basis. The result is a child with no biological link to the commissioning parents: is this still assisted reproduction or is it adoption-to-order?
Further suggested reforms might avoid this question by granting commissioning parents exclusive parental rights over the child from birth, paralleling legislation in countries like Greece; currently, surrogates in the UK must consent to terminate their default parental rights six weeks after the birth. Arguably, if there is no transfer of parenthood, it isn鈥檛 technically adoption. Nonetheless, the commissioning parents aren鈥檛 being assisted in reproducing. It therefore isn鈥檛 clear that we can call this assisted reproduction, either.
Genetic parenthood is a deeply important ambition for many. This, together with broader ideas of reproductive freedom, is often taken as the basis for improving access to assisted reproduction. But these justifications can鈥檛 stretch to cover DDS, in which neither the commissioning parents鈥� reproductive autonomy nor their desire for biological offspring play a role. Adoption is often a lengthy and difficult process, and newborn infants are both most in-demand and least available 鈥� but does this justify commissioning 鈥渘ew鈥� children for biologically unrelated prospective parents?
These proposed reforms have further ramifications for future technologies such as ectogenesis. If DDS becomes legal in England, Scotland and Wales, it will set a highly relevant precedent: a person may acquire a child via commission alone. This principle could carry over from DDS to the use of ectogenesis and artificial eggs/sperm.
If reproductive autonomy and parenthood come apart from (re)production, then the way in which we regulate these technologies might be simple 鈥� but whether that is a desirable world is quite a different question.
Teresa Baron is a University of Nottingham Research Fellow and author of The Philosopher鈥檚 Guide to Parenthood
