Reproductive gifts and gift giving: the altruistic woman.

Reproductive Gifts and Gift Giving: The Altruistic Woman In the aftermath of the "Baby M" case, the surrogacy debate has mostly left the media forum and entered the state legislatures. Many of these legislatures are now debating the legal status of surrogate contracts. Where legislative committees have opposed commercial contracts, they have tended to view alternative noncommercial surrogate parenting arrangements as ethically and legally permissible. An underlying theme here is that noncommercial arrangements are seen as altruistic This article examines the implications of an altruistic ethic, particularly in reference to surrogacy, and highlights its problems for women in the reproductive realm. Gifts and Gift Giving In his well-known study, The Gift Relationship: From Human Blood to Social policy, Richard Titmuss opposed commercial systems of blood supply to noncommercial and altruistic systems of blood giving. Titmuss's concern was to shore up the spirit of altruism and voluntarism which he saw declining in western societies. His analysis is, in the main, a positive assessment of the possibilities of altruistic blood donation. But Titmuss also understood that giving was influenced by "the relationship set up, social and economic, between the system and the donor," and that these relationships are "strongly determined by the values and cultural orientations permeating the donor system and the society in general." [1] The dialetic between values and structural factors emerges strongly in his work. We must ask, he wrote, if there is truly "no contract of custom, no legal bond, no functional determinism, no situations of discriminatory power, domination, constraint or compulsion, no sense of shame or guilt, no gratitude imperative and no need for the penitence of a Chrysostom" (239). The role of cultural values and constraints in shaping gift-giving arrangements is vital. In the case of many new reproductive practices, and surrogacy especially, "the donor system" mainly depends on women as the gift givers--women who donate the use of their bodies and the fruit of their wombs. Those who endorse altruistic surrogacy as an alternative to commercial surrogacy accept, without comment or criticism, that it is primarily women who constitute the altruistic population called upon to contribute gestating capacities. [2] The questions that Titmuss raised about "contract of custom," "functional determinism," "situations of discriminatory power," "domination, constraint or compulsion," as well as possible "shame or guilt" and a "gratitude imperative" form part of the unexamined hallowing of altruistic surrogacy. This unexamined acceptance of women as reproductive gift givers is very much related to a longstanding patriarchal tradition of giving women away in other cultural contexts--for sex and in marriage, for example. Following Titmuss, we must continually in these discussions of altruism ask: who gives and why? But further, who has been given away historically and why" In this sense, women are not only the gift givers but the gift as well. The pervasiveness of women's personal and social obligation to give shapes the contexts of reproductive gifts and gift giving. We see this most clearly in the situation of so-called altruistic surrogacy. Altruism versus Commercialism Those critical of commercial surrogacy often contrast it to noncommercial or altruistic surrogacy. The New Jersey Supreme Court, in its appellate judgement, In the Matter of Baby M, found surrogate contracts contrary to the law and public policy of the state. Nonetheless, it concluded that there were no legal impediments to arrangements "when the surrogate mother volunteers, without any payment, to act as a surrogate." [3] Many state legislative committees are taking action to prohibit commercial surrogacy but are leaving untouched the whole area of noncommercial surrogate practices. …