Surrogate Motherhood: Potential Conflicts Cannot Be Ignored.
Anton van Niekerk and Liezl van Zyl aim to address the moral issues of surrogacy by comparing it with prostitution. They ask whether it reduces women's reproductive labor to a form of alienated and/or dehumanized labor. They claim that surrogacy is not similar to prostitution: women's reproductive labor is distinguished from other forms of physical labor because the product is a child, not an object, and it involves social and psychological process of both the surrogate and the commissioning parents in expecting the child (346,347). Thus, they conclude that surrogacy could be moral only if the surrogate is a relative or close friend of the commissioning parents, and "continues to play an active role in the child's life as a 'second mother'" (348). Because only when this condition is obtained, will the surrogate's labor not be alienated or dehumanized, and will the commissioning parents not lose the child. .
To make their conclusion reasonable, van Niekerk and van Zyl make an important argument that "If [the surrogate] continues to play an active role in the child's life as a 'second mother', there could be no way in which her labor could be described as 'alienating' or 'dehumanising'" (348). The premise in the argument is: (1) the surrogate continues to play an active role in the child's life as a 'second mother'. The implicit premises are: (2) if the surrogate is not forced to hand over the child against her will, her labor is not an alienated labor; (3) if the surrogate has the ability to interpret and control the meaning or significance of her reproductive labor, then her labor is not dehumanized; (4) if the surrogate continues to play an active role in the child's life as a 'second mother', then she will not be forced to hand over the child, and will not relinquish her ability to interpret and control the meaning or significance of her reproductive labor".