Ethics Discussion
Surrogacy is a contractual agreement made in which a woman gives birth to a child on behalf of another couple. The woman giving birth on behalf of another couple is referred to as a surrogate mother (Kulkarni, 2015). A couple may enter into this contact due to issues like infertility. Surrogacy has brought some ethical concerns related to surrogate mothers’ autonomy.
Surrogate mothers lose autonomy over their bodies during their pregnancy. Notably, at this time, all decision regarding the fetus is made by another couple without involving the surrogate mother (Fronek, 2018). This means that in case of disagreement about the fetus, the surrogate mother’s opinion does not count. Surrogate mothers forfeit independence over their bodies.
Most of the surrogate mothers are illiterate and poor. The rich may take advantage of their vulnerability to exploit them by paying them money to enter into surrogacy contracts. (Marway, 2018) Although they are paid, the autonomy over their bodies is lost since they have to carry the pregnancy for another couple for nine months.
The introduction of the Health Information Technology(HIT) has improved the security and confidentiality of patients’ data compared to the previous manual method. However, the HIT has several ethical issues. HIT has separated the daily clinical care from clinical research. Clinical care does not allow trials since trials can result in patients’ deaths, while a clinical study is based on conducting tests (Ozair, Jamshed & Sharma, 2015). The thin line between the two created by the HIT may confuse the medics and cause deaths. It is unethical for a physician to risk the patient’s life through trials.
Through HIT, health workers may obtain patients’ sensitive data such as genetic material and gene sequencing without the patients’ consent. This is unethical. The HIPAA rules and ethics standard compels health workers to obtain the patient’s consent before acquiring their health data.
References
Kulkarni, R. (2015). Ethical dilemma in surrogacy, Hektoen International,7(1), https://hekint.org/2017/01/30/ethical-dilemmas-in-surrogacy/
Marway, H. (2018, Sep 27). The Ethics of Surrogacy, University of Birmingham, https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/news/thebirminghambrief/items/2018/09/the-ethics-of-surrogacy.aspx
Ozair, F., Jamshed N., & Sharma, A. (2015, April-June). Ethical Issues in Electronic Health Records, A General Overview, 6(2),73-76, Perspective in Research, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4394583/
Fronek, P. (2018, Feb 7). Current Perspective on the Ethics of Selling International Surrogacy Support Service, Dovepress,8(1), https://www.dovepress.com/current-perspectives-on-the-ethics-of-selling-international-surrogacy–peer-reviewed-fulltext-article-MB