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Consent Worries
• General consent worries:
– the surrogate’s consent is liable to be defective in all surrogacy
arrangements (paid or otherwise);
– the intended social parents’ consent is liable to be defective in all
surrogacy arrangements (paid or otherwise).
• Specific worries about payment and consent
– some women find the financial incentive hard to resist causing them to become surrogates involuntarily or against their interests;
– the intended social parents may be exploited (e.g. made to hand over excessive amounts due to their ‘desperation’ to have a child)
• Main focus today is on surrogates’ consents, which is not to say that there aren’t also genuine issues about the intended social parents.
What is required for valid consent?
• Sufficient competence or capacity to make the decision
• Sufficient information and understanding
• Voluntariness: sufficient freedom from controlling influences, such as excessive coercion and manipulation.
• All three are needed
• “Sufficiency” is important
• What counts as sufficient may vary from case to case
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