Surrogacy is one of the debatable fertility treatments under assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs). The involvement of a third party throughout the birth of a child raises many social and ethical questions. But surrogacy gives a chance to infertile couples who are unsuccessful in having their biological child/ children through other fertility treatment options including IVF and gamete donation services.
But the involvement of legal advocacy is indeed very important to avoid unethical practices. Many countries have already banned commercial surrogacy and some of them also prohibited altruistic surrogacy for foreigners to control the women’s vulnerability.
Alternatives to Surrogacy
Adoption and its consequences
If you think about not opting for surrogacy and searching for alternatives, then the search result provides the least options. Adoption is one of the most common alternatives to surrogacy. Although raising a child is always the happiest moment for parents, both pros and cons are comparable between surrogacy and adoption.
Genetic compatibility in gestational surrogacy simplifies the legal process and makes the preferable choice for intended parents. Gestational surrogacy provides the opportunity for the intended parents to have a biological relationship with their child/children.
But no such option is available in adoption also to various personal laws. Countries like India, where various religions stay together have divergence in adoption regulations which raises the question of the feasibility of adoption.
Read Also: Surrogacy in India Alternative
The financial cost of adoption and surrogacy involves huge expenses because of the service charges of the agency and legal involvement. However, in the case of surrogacy medical expenses and compensation to surrogates are an additional burden, though medical expenses can be deducted by insurance coverage and tax deduction services. It is necessary to mention that many countries like the federal government charge tax for adoption.
The mutual matching process in surrogacy makes it more compatible for both intended parents and surrogates. Whereas in adoption, the birth mother has the ultimate right to choose the family where she wants to place her child.
However, in the adoption process, the selection criteria like medical history, race, substance exposure, and post-placement contact can be selected by intended parents.
In surrogacy, a stringent screening process is followed to select surrogates and intended parents have more control over prenatal care. Such possibilities are negligible in adoption. The information on the social and medical history of the mother of the adopted child is completely dependent upon the intention of the self-disclosure of the mother.
However, in surrogacy, extensive medical processes and uncertainty of the treatment outcome are considerable factors. Parents need to decide the options depending on the individual requirements of the family.
Uterus transplantation
Advancement of medical science recently reported that uterus transplantation may be an alternative to currently available treatments for absolute uterine factor infertility.
Clinical researchers expected that uterus transplantation might improve clinical methods that offer better results than two other established conventional treatments gestational surrogacy and adoption.
Clinically, this process is superior to surrogacy as it allows experiencing gestation for the mother and the fulfillment of a woman to deliver her child. Ethical and legal controversy related to surrogacy is comparable less to the uterus transplantation process.
The chances of fraud cases associated with surrogacy are negligible. But uterus transplantation requires living donors and straightforwardly creates a subject of argument, apart from the risk of failure of proper transplantation along with complications of the whole procedure.
Egg donation with IVF may work as a surrogacy alternative
Egg donation may work for women who can carry a pregnancy with no/low-quality egg production.
References:
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2625608
Ravi Sharma is a self-motivated, successful entrepreneur and has a solid experience in the fertility segment. and he is the director at ARTbaby Global (ARThealthcare). He is a pharmacy graduate with post-graduation in business administration and has 14 years of rich experience in the field of infertility segment. He loves to write about IVF, Surrogacy, and other ART (assisted reproductive technology) news, issues, and updates. He is a Pharmacy graduate (B. Pharm) and M.B.A (marketing).
His most recent success includes the successful launch of the medical tourism company, ARTbaby, which offers treatment options for infertility, egg donation, and surrogacy. He likes spending time with his family and writing about various aspects of IVF surrogacy and donating eggs.