Another State Legalizes Commercial Surrogacy

Bioethics

Last Month New York lawmakers reportedly legalized the controversial practice of commercial surrogacy.

The legislation was tacked onto a budget measure that passed amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Commercial surrogacy is a practice where companies and wealthy couples pay women thousands of dollars to carry children.

There are several ethical problems with commercial surrogacy and egg harvesting. Here are a few:

  • Selling Children. Commercial surrogacy treats babies like products and ultimately amounts to buying and selling children for profit.
  • Unethical Treatment of Women. Commercial surrogacy and egg harvesting programs treat women like commodities.
  • Exploitation of Women and Children. Commercial surrogacy makes it possible to exploit women and children, which is one reason why the practice is banned in many countries and why the European Union has condemned it as a human rights violation.

Commercial surrogacy and egg harvesting also carry a number of health risks for women.

Unfortunately, Arkansas law currently allows commercial surrogacy and commercial egg harvesting.

That’s why Family Council has supported legislation in the past that would have addressed these issues.

H.B. 1761 of 2019 would have regulated the buying and selling of human eggs. It would have prohibited companies from paying women for their eggs, but it contained exceptions for free egg donations and for fertility treatments.

The bill passed in the Arkansas House, but unfortunately failed to make it through the senate before the session adjourned.

In 2017 then-Rep. Greg Leding sponsored a bill prohibiting commercial surrogacy in Arkansas; unfortunately the bill never came up for a vote before the legislature adjourned.

Being pro-life means believing that human life is sacred from conception until natural death.

It means treating human life with respect at every stage of development.

It also means recognizing that human beings are not products that can be bought or sold.

In this way, commercial surrogacy violates the sanctity and dignity of human life.

READ MORE

Count the Cost of Denying Patients Assisted Suicide: Bioethicist

Bioethics, Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide, Life, , , ,

For more than 20 years Family Council has opposed efforts to legalize assisted suicide in Arkansas.

Last year we helped defeat a proposal to let doctors prescribe lethal drugs to patients.

One of the points we have made time and again is that patients, doctors, and hospitals may feel financial pressure to opt for assisted suicide, if it is legalized.

Last year a Canadian man with ALS made headlines when he chose to take his own life under the country’s assisted suicide and euthanasia laws after the government chose not to provide him with 24-hour home healthcare services due to cost.

In parts of the U.S. where physician-assisted suicide is legal, insurance companies have refused to pay for patients’ medical care, but have offered to cover assisted-suicide drugs.

Proponents of assisted suicide generally dismiss these concerns.

However, last week a bioethicist and a European professor published an article in which they actually argued that assisted suicide makes sense economically.

Writing in the journal Clinical Ethics, bioethicist Dr. David Shaw and Professor Alec Morton make three points:

  • Assisted suicide lets patients avoid suffering
  • The resources that would be used helping them could be used to help other patients instead
  • Doctors may be able to harvest organs from patients who opt for assisted suicide

The authors even go so far as to write,

For example, a patient who is in great pain because of cancer with a life expectancy of around two years will continue to require pain medication and support from clinical staff and also carers for those two years. For each such patient, legalising assisted dying would avoid this waste of resources.

There is so much wrong with these arguments that it is difficult to know where to begin.

For starters, we know from experience in other states that assisted suicide doesn’t actually help patients avoid suffering.

In fact, most people who inquire about assisted suicide generally are not concerned about pain or suffering.

Many of them are lonely and feel like they are losing control over their lives because of their illness. They need counseling — not a prescription for lethal drugs.

Second, you cannot place a dollar value on human life — but that is exactly where this type of thinking leads.

Being pro-life means believing human life is sacred from conception until natural death.

Just like abortion, euthanasia and assisted-suicide are murder, and they violate the sanctity of human life.

READ MORE