Should Surrogacy Be Reduced to Moral Absolutes?

A young woman agrees to be a surrogate for the wealthy woman she works for. She has the time, needs the money, and sees no reason to refuse. But when the child is born, something shifts, an attachment she hadn’t anticipated. In the end, she flees the hospital and chooses to raise the baby herself. This fictional case study highlights the emotional and ethical complexities of surrogacy. Who bears the greater responsibility, the affluent woman who honored the agreement or the surrogate who defied it?

Two days ago, there was a heated debate on X (formerly Twitter) over surrogacy’s ethics. It was caused by a discussion about acclaimed author Chimamanda Adichie’s surrogate twins. Adichie’s story was just the catalyst; the real fire lay in the deeper ethical questions that followed: Who gets to define family? How do we reconcile economic necessity with human dignity? And in a world of financial inequality, what does true consent look like?

A surrogate mother is a woman who agrees to carry and give birth to a child on behalf of another person or couple, who will become the child’s legal parents after birth. This arrangement is typically formalized through a legal contract, which often includes financial compensation (commercial surrogacy). But surrogacy is not a modern phenomenon, it has existed for centuries, embedded in human survival strategies. The Bible provides one of the earliest documented accounts: Sarah, unable to conceive, enlists her servant Hagar to bear a child for her husband Abraham, illustrating how reproductive challenges have long been navigated through complex interpersonal arrangements. 

Historical records also reflect this urgency. A 4,000-year-old Assyrian clay tablet discovered in Turkey contains a marriage contract stipulating that if a wife were infertile, her husband could impregnate a slave girl to produce an heir. Divorce was not an option; infertility alone was not considered a justifiable cause. The drive for reproduction is one of humanity’s most primal instincts, and childbirth has long been a societal expectation within marriage.

In Nigeria, the Igbo people (though not exclusively) practiced woman-to-woman marriage, where a woman unable to conceive could marry another woman who would bear children on her behalf. As Emmanuel Azubuike notes in The Republic, these arrangements often occurred after the first wife endured years of societal pressure and victimization. While there are other motivations behind woman-to-woman marriages, this remains a central reason within this discussion. In this part of the world, simply being a woman is not enough; one must prove it. Can you conceive? Can you endure the pain of childbirth while fulfilling your marital duties? Can you breastfeed your child? 

Despite its historical roots, surrogacy today exists in murky legal waters in Nigeria. It is neither outlawed nor protected, leaving morality, rather than legislation, to shape the rules. At its core, the surrogacy debate exposes an economic reality: for marginalized women, reproduction may become a survival strategy. The female body is commodified and transformed into an economic instrument. Yet, reducing this arrangement to mere exploitation strips these women of their agency, their ability to make calculated, autonomous decisions about their bodies and futures.

The ethical dilemma does not lie in the transaction itself but in the conditions surrounding it. Specifically, the transparency and informed consent that govern the process. A robust framework should ensure comprehensive disclosure: What are the precise medical risks? How will pregnancy alter the body, both physically and psychologically? What are the long-term implications? If a woman, fully aware of the potential for epidurals, cesarean sections, or even the rare possibility of death, still chooses to proceed, can her decision truly be labeled as exploitation? This question echoes broader debates on bodily autonomy, particularly in sex work, where consent and information determine ethical boundaries.

Still, the emotional and physical toll reported by some surrogate mothers cannot be dismissed. Their pain is real, their trauma undeniable. Yet, can we justifiably place the full burden of this suffering on individuals who entered into a consensual agreement? Or is the true responsibility collective, rooted in systemic inequalities that render certain bodies more economically vulnerable than others? 

We’ve established that having biological children holds immense significance, particularly in Nigeria. This reality often renders the argument for adoption ineffective, as many women, in a bid to secure their marriages, turn to traditional surrogacy, gestational surrogacy, or other assisted reproductive technology. But instead of blaming these women for their choices, shouldn’t the real scrutiny be directed at the patriarchal structures that pressure them into prioritizing biological motherhood? Many argue that adoption is a morally superior alternative. But adoption, too, exists in morally gray terrain. Prospective parents often impose expectations on children, sometimes even returning them when they fail to meet certain standards (appearance, personality, or perceived potential). Unlike biological parenthood, where one must accept the child they birth, adoption can become a transactional process, reducing children to commodities.

This darker side of adoption is evident in the existence of baby farms and corrupt agencies that traffic children under the guise of legal adoption. In such cases, both children and surrogate mothers become vulnerable to exploitation. Netflix’s Baby Farm, produced by EbonyLife, sheds light on this unsettling reality, showing how surrogacy and adoption can both be fraught with moral complexities.

Like a river carving its path through unyielding terrain, the surrogacy debate offers no clear tributaries of right or wrong. The affluent women seeking biological children and the surrogate mothers navigating economic hardships are not adversaries but participants in the same human experience. Each moves in response to personal truths: one driven by the primal yearning for biological continuity, the other by the urgency of survival.

Surrogacy is, at its core, a contract, an agreement that bridges two deeply human needs. To reduce it to a moral absolute is to flatten its complexities, ignoring the nuanced emotional landscape it inhabits. The real question is not whether surrogacy should exist but how it can be conducted with the utmost dignity, transparency, and mutual respect. Beneath the legal contracts and financial transactions, surrogacy is ultimately about the profound bond formed between a body and the life it nurtures. The shared heartbeats and the unspoken conversations between mother and child cannot be quantified by compensation or erased by obligations. In the end, both the surrogate and the intended parents are unlikely collaborators in one of humanity’s most sacred narratives: the creation and nurturing of life.