Sperm superior to ovum in surrogacy

Associate Professor at the John Dossetor Health Ethics Centre Dr Laura Shanner says it is the gender divide that explains the surrogate vs. egg-donor dichotomy in an infertility clinic whereby it is acceptable for a woman to carry donor eggs and be called a mother while in the same clinic, a woman who carries somebody else’s embryo is merely a surrogate.

“In a situation like this the person who gets to be the mother is the person who is socially connected to the father”, says Dr. Shanner.

“Who is claiming to be the father here? Whichever woman is connected to him gets to be called the mother here, regardless of her biological or genetic connection to the pregnancy”, she says.

Dr Shanner points out another aspect of gender inequality to surrogacy vis-à-vis the discrepancy in the level of infertility treatments for women and men respectively.

She says, “Where are the treatments that target male infertility and yet we do reproductive technologies to help men with low sperm count fertilise ova.”

“It occurs to us to be entirely reasonable to do infertility treatments on women when it is her male partner who is suffering from infertility.”