Jennifer Parks

This essay will focus on the moral issues relating to surrogacy in the global context, and will critique the liberal arguments that have been offered in support of it. Liberal arguments hold sway concerning reproductive arrangements made between commissioning couples from wealthy nations and the surrogates from socioeconomically weak backgrounds that they hire to do their reproductive labor. My argument in this paper is motivated by a concern for controlling harms by putting the practice of globalized commercial surrogacy into the context of care ethics. As I will argue, the unstable situations into which children of global surrogacy arrangements are born is symbolic of the crisis of care that the practice raises. Using the Baby Manji case as my touch point, I will suggest that liberalism cannot address the harms experienced by Manji and children like her who are created through the global practice of assisted reproductive technology. I will argue that, if commissioning couples consider their proposed surrogacy contracts from a care ethics point of view, they will begin to think relationally about their actions, considering the practice from an ethical lens, not just an economic or contractual one.

I consider how a feminist account might address the practice of surrogacy in Japan, both domestically and in the transnational context. Japanese culture emphasizes traditional values, family heritage, and the value of reproduction. Japan offers an interesting case study, since surrogacy is currently under review, and the government is in the process of determining its stance on the practice. I will advocate for legal changes to how surrogacy is treated, suggesting that Japan should eliminate the koseki, or the Family Registration Act, which stipulates that only birth parents may register children as their natural children. A principle of respect for women should be explicitly adopted in setting regulations or guidelines surrounding this practice; additionally, attempts should be made to address citizens’ reproductive needs domestically, thus reducing the global demand for these arrangements.

Some authors have advanced a contractual model to protect patient autonomy within the therapeutic relationship. Such a conception of the physician–patient relationship is intended to serve both parties by respecting patients' choices and preserving physician integrity. I critique this contractual view and offer an alternative, feminist contextualized approach to autonomy within the therapeutic relationship. This approach places the physician-patient relationship within a larger social context, and indicates the many social inequalities that render insupportable the notion of physicians and patients as contracting equals

In this thesis I argue that the received view of autonomy is insufficient for both biomedical ethics and feminist theory. I begin with an examination of the received view of autonomy; I then indicate the way in which this view of autonomy has been applied to health care ethics. A feminist relational approach to autonomy is explored: I argue that such an approach has many strengths in that it gives us a more accurate picture of the self-in-relationships and that it recognizes many social and structural conditions that may impede an individual's attempts to be autonomous. ;This feminist relational approach to autonomy, once defined, is applied to the medical/social practices of cosmetic surgery and contract motherhood. I do this to show the practical implications of this contextual approach to autonomy

This paper considers the issues surrounding women’s bare-breastedness and breastfeeding in public. I argue that women should have equal freedoms with men to bare their breasts in public, but not for the reasons commonly cited Proponents of “the public breast” tend to focus on the similarities between women’s and men’s breasts; I argue that the sameness versus difference debate is unhelpful in resolving this question. As I argue, women’s breasts differ from men’s in significant ways, and by dismissing these differences we dismiss the possibility of women’s authentic breasted experience. Instead, I suggest that women share an equal interest with men in defining their sexuality: When women are denied the right to go topless or breastfeed in public, they are denied their own understandings of their breasts.