Surrogate Brain-Dead Women: Is The Suggestion As Archaic As It Sounds?

In the world of celebrity, using a surrogate is nothing new. Both Kim and Khloe Kardashian relied on one after the birth of their first children, and Sex And The City star Sarah Jessica Parker and her husband Matthew Broderick added to their family with the help of a surrogate. 

And even outside of Hollywood, those who struggle with infertility, or who have been medically advised against getting pregnant, can turn to surrogates to help them start a family, too. Surrogacy is also a popular choice among gay and trans couples hoping to have children, where often one partner's sperm or egg is used, allowing them to create a family with a biological connection. 

Only recently, Made In Chelsea's Ollie Locke and husband Gareth Locke (who have taken on ‘Locke-Locke' as their married name) used the reality show as a platform to discuss their struggles with having a baby via a surrogate. 

In short, surrogacy is a wonderful thing, and the women who decide to put their bodies through pregnancy in order to help others start a family should be applauded. However, the recent suggestion that brain-dead women should be used as surrogates for those unable, or unwilling, to carry babies of their own, has understandably caused shock and anger. 

In a study by The Colombian Medical College professor Anna Smajdor, published in the medical journal Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics, the female academic put forward the idea that 'brain-dead women' could have their bodies used to house surrogate pregnancies. “What about all those brain-stem dead female bodies in hospital beds? Why should their wombs be going to waste?” asks the article.

She argues that "we already know pregnancies can be successfully carried to term in brain dead women" and suggests "there is no obvious medical reason why initiating such pregnancies would not be possible", referencing the question of ethics within the world of surrogacy as it exists today.

Unsurprisingly, the report went viral, with many understandably outraged at the suggestion, given that brain-dead women are not able to give consent. However, Smajdor's article does in fact reference consent, making the case that whole body gestational donation (WBGD), as she calls it, could be set up in the same way that organ donation is, i.e. that a woman would explicitly consent to her body being used in this way should she be declared medically brain-dead. 

Despite this though, the suggestion that brain-dead women should be used as surrogates is still a damning indication that women’s bodies are still seen, in many ways, as containers - whether they consent or not. 

“This is a very, very, very weird concept to think about and approach. It can be viewed as another careless thought about women’s bodies being vessels for human gestation and nothing else,” wrote one user on Twitter, as part of a thread about whether the idea of consent changes the overall nature of the suggestion. 

Throughout history, women have been seen as vessels for which to bring new life into the world and have suffered immensely because of it. In the past, religious tradition and pre-modern European medicine have often referred to women as a ‘vessel’, and even in the present, the recent anti-abortion legislation passed in the USA further reinstalls the idea that women do not have complete autonomy over their bodies. 

From our very first period, a woman learns that her body has been designed for childbirth, but it is society that turns this biological system into some sort of albatross to be worn around our necks. Even when a woman makes the choice to become pregnant and is grateful to be so, she is still giving up control of her body, though there are now far more resources out there to help support her through it physically and mentally.

To suggest that a brain-dead woman be used as a surrogate is to undermine the fact that a large amount of pregnancy relies on a woman knowing her own body. She must understand what is ‘normal’ for her and when something feels ‘wrong’, she needs to use her gut instinct to make decisions on what is best and, should a medical complication arise, she needs to be present enough to advocate for herself. A brain-dead woman can do none of these things. 

When we start to discuss using women in this way we begin to confuse the word ‘brain-dead’ with ‘zombie’ - the mind conjures up dystopian images of women, hooked up to machines, unable to speak or interact, waiting out the nine months of pregnancy in isolation and silence. 

When we start to discuss using women in this way we begin to confuse the word ‘brain-dead’ with ‘zombie’ - the mind conjures up dystopian images of women, hooked up to machines, unable to speak or interact, waiting out the nine months of pregnancy in isolation and silence. We can only wonder how her family might feel to see her like this. Presumably, any woman who underwent WBGD would have to be kept in hospital for the entirety of the gestation period, making it logistically more difficult for loved ones to visit. On top of this, it's very likely that loved ones would find the process traumatic to witness, as well as throw up questions about who then had autonomy over decisions made on her behalf - the family she was a surrogate for? Her own family? Medical staff? 

“As a specialist in maternal and fetal health this concept is completely disgraceful. To essentially boil down a person's whole life simply to be used as a tool for others should never be considered,” Dr Gareth Nye, Endocrinology theme lead for the Physiological Society, says. “To compare surrogacy to organ donation is an oversimplification.”

“The bottom line is we don't know if it's physiologically feasible to maintain life support for this length of time and whether a person on life support could maintain a viable pregnancy,” concludes Dr Gareth. 

In short, it's an emotional, medical, ethical minefield… and that's putting it mildly. 

Colombia’s medical association has since apologised after being accused of endorsing the controversial idea of keeping brain-dead women alive so their bodies can be used to have babies as surrogate mothers, explaining claiming that its only interest was “medical progress at the service of humanity with the highest bioethical standards”.

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