Debating Surrogacy

For an excellent sense of what can lead to principled disagreement about whether surrogacy is permissible-even between those who accept that women should be free to make reproductive choices-read no further than this debate. The exchange of views Gheaus and Straehle offer is intelligent, well-informed, clearly written and philosophically literate with each side’s position founded on important normative commitments about what it means to be a parent and what is owed to the future child. * David Archard, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy, Queen’s University Belfast *
Surrogacy continues to attract controversy-understandably so. In this book, Gheaus and Straehle outline, in the form of a debate, philosophical arguments for and against. They do with clarity, rigour, imagination, and intellectual generosity towards each other. A must-read not just for applied ethicists but for anyone who is interested in this difficult issue. * Cécile Fabre, All Souls College, Oxford *

Anca Gheaus is a political philosopher whose research focuses on justice and the normative significance of personal relationships. She is co-editor of The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Childhood and Children (2018) and has published numerous journal articles and book chapters on topics including childrearing, gender justice, love, non-ideal theory, relational versus distributive egalitarianism, and methodological issues in political theory.

Christine Straehle is Professor for Practical Philosophy at the University of Hamburg and Professor of Ethics and Applied Ethics at the University of Ottawa. Prior to her appointment in Hamburg, she was the inaugural and founding director of the Centre for Philosophy, Politics and Economics in the Faculty of Philosophy at Groningen University in 2016, where she also held the Chair in Philosophy and Public Affairs. She has received several prizes and prestigious fellowships, including the Kitty Newman Prize for Social Philosophy from the Royal Society of Canada in 2019, and, most recently in 2023, a senior research fellowship at the Swedish Collegium of Advanced Studies.

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