SURROGACY VIS-À-VIS NATURAL LAW THEORY: A CRITICAL EVALUATION

Abstract

This work tends to evaluate critically surrogate motherhood parenting through the natural law principles. Surrogacy raises a serious ethical problem of commodification of children and the gestational mother. This work makes use of critical method to subject surrogate motherhood to critical reflection in relation to natural law philosophers or theorists. Hence, this work conceives that surrogacy is geared to assist couples with fertility problems and women with medical complications who are not able to conceive and bear a child. But, surrogacy other practices associated with it in in vitro fertilization seem to contravene the natural law which intends the union of male and female gametes for procreation. Nowadays, people abuse surrogate motherhood to engage in some practices that is against nature. For instance, some men, women, gay or lesbian couples use surrogate motherhood to beget children for them to distort the natural union of a man and woman in marriage. In other cases, some wealthy women who do not want to undergo the stress of pregnancy pay surrogate mother to bear children for them as a means of modernity. On the other hand, surrogacy serves to bridge the gap of the decreasing number of children for adoption in this present era. Thus, this work postulates that it has to be regulated at the state and international level in order to tackle the abuse of human dignity in Nigeria and the global world at large.