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Notes -
One more for the road
I was surprised to find, after last month's extensive discussion initiated by a post by @ChickenOverlord of a Canadian surrogacy/abortion case, that no one had posted a substantially similar, though differing in key details, US version that has recently generated an application to the Supreme Court for a stay. The case is different enough that it seems like it might serve as a stress test for some of the claims and ethical intuitions made in the previous discussion.
To summarize the overlapping portion: in both cases the surrogate refused the "commissioning" party's request for abortion following detection of fetal abnormalities, gave birth, and was then involved in extensive litigation. The previous case had a significant same-sex surrogacy culture war nexus. This case features US federalism and jurisdictional questions, as well as the more significant but partially treatable hypoplastic left heart syndrome.
The very compressed summary is that McKenna West of Alaska was asked to abort, per their contract, by Omar Ahmed and Nausheen Gilkar of California. She subsequently fled to Texas, with ongoing litigation as to the ultimate parental rights and appropriate forum. The child is referred to as Gabriel and Rumi by the respective parties. Which probably leads into the stronger, though possibly less legalistic, metaphysical question in this case about what constitutes abdication of parental rights.
In some respects, the current case reverses the question of limiting principle. In this case, the pre-existing contract specifically called for the right of the commissioners to opt for abortion due to fetal abnormalities, and the abnormalities are arguably more incurable. There is some question as to whether that makes the arrangement more binding. It's not clear to me where you should draw the intuitive line at which the contract is entered into with so much foreknowledge, with so much consent, and with abnormalities so severe that we should feel compelled to enforce such a clause. In the previous case it was observed:
That it's unclear whether the problem can really be resolved with sufficiently strong contractual terms. I'm slightly more inclined to accept the premise that surrogacy in general opens up a Pandora's box of ethical problems. Perhaps atomizing the individual biological connections of procreation has produced a system that makes ordinary moral intuition untenable. It was argued in the previous thread that either a full retvrn to nature, or extreme proceduralization and medicalization, might be more stable equilibria.
Obviously, a black woman claiming asylum in Texas from a gay muslim couple demanding an unwanted abortion is a culture war issue.
Now, if this woman were truly consistently pro-life from the outset, she wouldn't have been a surrogate. But fair enough, some people see the reality and have a moral awakening. Generally speaking if they won't take the child it's unclear why they care; it's unlikely she's going to get child support from them anyways. But they have the kid, don't they?
Wait, why wouldn’t she have been a surrogate at all?
Presumably she never would have accepted a contract clause about abortion, but I figure you can come to pro-life beliefs without holding a specific marriage-only doctrine.
She did accept a contract clause about abortion.
I thought you were saying no pro-lifer would be a surrogate at all, even without such a clause.
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