Browsing by Author "Kaarento, Vilja"

Surrogacy is an arrangement where a woman carries and gives birth to a child of another woman, who is unable to get pregnant because of complications with the uterus or other biological limitations. Surrogacy arrangements can be altruistic, where the surrogate acts of her own accord without financial reward, or commercial, where the surrogate and the surrogacy agency receive financial reward for the operation. In 2007 the Act on Assisted Fertility Treatments was passed in Finland to forbid all assisted fertility treatments that are aimed for surrogacy arrangements. No studies of Finnish surrogacy have been conducted to date and the Finnish governments’ justification of Act on Assisted Fertility Treatments was lacking psychological research evidence. This review examines the psychological impacts of surrogacy arrangements on all parties involved: the child, the surrogate and the intended parents. Based on the studies represented in this review, there are no major differences in psychological well-being between surrogacy children, children born after other types of assisted reproduction treatment, or after natural conception up to the age of 10. Surrogacy does not seem to cause severe or long-term psychological problems for surrogates, although the prevalence of post-birth depression showed mixed results. The surrogates report that the main motives for becoming a surrogate are altruistic and consider the relationships to the intended parents and the child mostly positive. Research shows that the intended parents’ psychological state does not differ from parents with a naturally conceived child or parents of children conceived by other assisted fertility treatments. The lack of genetic or gestational link between the child and the intended parents does not seem to reduce the quality of parenting. Even though published research is limited in terms of methodological quality and the origin of publications it would seem that psychological impacts of altruistic surrogacy arrangements do not cause long-term or substantial harm for the parties involved and therefore the Finnish Act on Assisted Fertility treatments’ prohibition of surrogacy is not justified from a psychological point of view.