Journal: Eikon
Volume: EIKON 07:1 (Spring 2025)
Article: Surrogate Motherhood: A Christian Ethical Analysis
Author: J. Alan Branch

Eikon 7.1 (Spring 2025) p. 41

Surrogate Motherhood: A Christian Ethical Analysis

J. Alan Branch

Dr. J. Alan Branch is Professor of Christian Ethics at Midwestern Seminary and author of 50 Ethical Questions: Biblical Wisdom for Confusing Times and Affirming God’s Image: Addressing the Transgender Question with Science and Scripture. He is also the pastor of First Baptist Church At The Villlages.

Eikon 7.1 (Spring 2025) p. 42

Moral questions surrounding the issue of surrogacy were brought directly to my attention during an Uber ride in Dallas, Texas in 2019.1 Having attended a conference in the Dallas metroplex, I secured an Uber driver to take me back to the airport. As I sat in the back of a lovely Chevy Tahoe, the young woman driver began to open up about her life. Having completed college, she was supplementing her income by taking Uber fares, something she did to pay off her college debt. She then casually mentioned that she was considering becoming a surrogate to pay off her student loans. We had an engaging conversation in which I gently suggested some reasons why I had moral concerns about surrogacy, and I gathered she had not heard any of these counterarguments. I want to stress that our conversation was open and pleasant and not acrimonious, but the image of this bright young woman who projected herself very well and yet was considering surrogacy as a way of paying off student loans has remained with me.

Surrogacy was again pressed upon my mind in January, 2024. My wife and I vacationed on a cruise that docked at the Port of Galveston Island. As my wife Lisa and I were riding the shuttle bus from Galveston Island to the airport in Houston, we passed a billboard which promised women $60,000 for being a surrogate mother. As we exited the interstate and approached the airport we passed two strip clubs which advertised lewd entertainment provided by young women. In my mind, I felt that the billboard advertising surrogacy and the strip clubs had something in common: Both were exploiting the bodies of young women, promising them profit for selling themselves.

The modern practice of surrogate motherhood has brought with it a multitude of new moral and ethical questions. Surrogacy can be defined as the practice whereby one woman carries and delivers a child for another woman, another man, or another couple with or without payment and with the intention that the child should be handed over at birth.2 Surrogacy is connected with the broader field of artificial reproductive technologies in that various procedures such as in vitro fertilization or artificial insemination make surrogacy possible since these are the methods used