Which "ethical balloons" did the star "surrogacy and abandonment" incident pierce
■ Observer
In order to avoid the recurrence of incidents such as "return of surrogacy" and "abandonment of surrogacy", it has become necessary to start with the reconstruction of social values and recreate ethical care in the era of technology.
In the past few days, Zheng Shuang’s “surrogacy and abandonment” news has exploded the entire network, once again making surrogacy a hot public issue: Will surrogacy make women a fertility tool, and whether the commercialization of surrogacy is equivalent to organ trading and disguised form? Human trafficking, how to deal with the gray and black industrial chain of surrogacy...
The particularity of these topics is that people generally cannot find satisfactory answers and solutions to these problems.
The fundamental reason for this feeling of powerlessness is that the social application of artificial reproductive technology of surrogacy has a series of complicated ethical dilemmas.
First of all, we must recognize that the ethical subversive and provocative nature of surrogacy through artificial reproductive technology.
From the perspective of the most basic moral relationship between motherhood and mother-child relationship, the act of surrogacy itself is contrary to morality.
The essential paradox lies in the fact that the purpose of "surrogate mothers" to conceive children is to separate from them and lose their motherhood; the client does not or rarely bear the burden of childbirth, but obtains parenthood.
In view of the ethical conflicts and social moral dilemmas brought by surrogacy, relevant laws and regulations in our country prohibit surrogacy.
Although there is no shortage of discussions in the academic circles on the possibility of limited liberalization of surrogacy, the ethical issues themselves cannot be avoided.
In fact, "rich men's crossover games" such as celebrity surrogacy are nothing new.
In the past few years, there have been phenomena such as "surrogacy tourism" at home and abroad.
After arousing social attention, the ethical issues involved in health risks, reproductive rights, and gender inequality have received extensive attention, and many countries have made many corresponding changes at the policy level.
In recent years, India, where the output value of the surrogacy industry once reached tens of billions of dollars, began to reflect on the pros and cons of commercial surrogacy and tightened legal regulations.
British ethics experts who have allowed the legalization of unpaid surrogacy are also calling for global coordinated governance to stop the exploitation of women.
The reasons for this change are conceptual, such as gender equality, criticism of the commercialization of the body, etc., but more of it stems from the recognition of the negative effects of surrogacy.
Paying attention to the negative impact of surrogacy, starting with the reconstruction of social values, and recreating ethical care in the era of technology, has become a necessary move.
At this level, two aspects should be paid special attention to.
One is to protect the rights and interests of disadvantaged groups, especially the interests of surrogate children in surrogacy behaviors that have occurred.
Among them, we should not only pay great attention to the rights and interests of surrogate fetuses during pregnancy, but also consider institutional arrangements such as social workers and public guardians to substantially protect their rights and interests.
The second is the governance of the gray area, especially for the phenomenon of surrogacy and reproductive tourism in black intermediary organizations, and the offensive of public opinion must be strengthened to force comprehensive governance.
Here, we must focus on eliminating illegal recruitment of surrogacy on university campuses, and strengthening the ethical and legal regulations of the medical expert group.
"Surrogacy" cannot come as soon as you want, and "abandonment" is even more unwilling.
These ethical bottom lines need to be reiterated.
□Duan Weiwen (Center for Science, Technology and Social Studies, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences)