My talk at the 40th Annual Meeting of the Science Society of Thailand

1. Ethics of Gestational Surrogacy
Soraj Hongladarom
Department of Philosophy and
Center for Ethics of Science and Technology
Chulalongkorn University
hsoraj@chula.ac.th

2. Outline
● Basic ethical issues
● What could be particularly unethical in
mother surrogacy
● Ethics and law
● Recommendations

3. Basic Ethical Issues
● Multiple mothers
● Commercialization
● Natural ties
● Family values
● Exploitation of surrogate mothers
● Global justice issues

4. Particularly Unethical Issues
● Exploitation
– But what would happen if there were no
exploitation (for example, if the surrogate
mother is adequately compensated and there
is no conflict).
● Compensation
– Is the idea of compensation in itself unethical?

5. Ethics and Law
● A lot of confusion on the two
● Ethics should always come before the law
– that is, there has to be a broad
agreement in society as to what is right or
wrong before the law comes to effect
accordingly.
● But sometimes law comes before ethics –
which creates a lot of problems.

6. Current Thai Law
● New law being deliberated in the National
Legislative Assembly
● Very strict – the surrogate mother has to
have a child already and get permission from
her husband; she can’t be parents or
children of the commissioning couple.
● No advertisement, no middleman.
● This will effectively destroy or greatly reduce
the practice of surrogacy in Thailand.

8. Analysis
● No middleman
– What if the fertility clinic itself function as a middleman?
● No advertisement
– How can this be enforced in reality?
● Compensation
– Many have voiced opinion that some form of compensation should be
all right, if it is fair and no exploitation is involved.
● Medical Council
– Many difficult issues get thrown to the Medical Council.
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