bs."
Lori Andrews, on the other hand, takes the contrasting view of surrogacy. She argues that in the past two decades, feminist policy arguments have refashioned legal policies toward the idea that women have a right to reproductive choice. Women have the right to control their bodies during pregnancy and these rights should not be overridden even by possible symbolic harms or speculative risks to potential children. Biology, she states, should not be destiny and the equal treatment of the sexes requires that decisions about men and women be made on other than biological grounds.
Andrews argues that the very existence of surrogacy is a predictable outgrowth of the feminist movement. Feminist gains allowed women to pursue educational and career opportunities once reserved for men. But this also meant that more women were postponing childbearing and suffering the natural decline in fertility that occurs with age. She also asserts that feminism also makes it more likely for other women to feel comfortable being surrogates. Feminism taught that not all women relate to all pregnancies in the same way. A woman could choose not to be a rearing mother; she could choose to lead a child-free life by not getting pregnant. If she got pregnant, she could choose to abort. Reproduction was a condition of her body over which she, and no one else, would have control. Andrews is aware, of course, of the feminists that now seek to ban surrogacy altogether. She states, however, that the rationales for such a ban are often the same rationales that feminists opposed in the contexts of abortion and contraception. She believes the adoption of these rationales could severely undercut the gains made in these areas and divides the rationales into three general categories: the symbolic harm to society of allowing paid surrogacy, the potential risks to the woman of allowing paid surrogacy, and the potential risks to the potential child...