A Handmaid’s Tale? Support for surrogacy reform: experimental evidence from Britain
A Handmaid’s Tale? Support for surrogacy reform: experimental evidence from Britain
Aspiring parents who are unable to have biological children increasingly rely on gestational surrogacy. This practice, while longstanding, remains controversial. Despite domestic prohibitions, several states are considering liberalizing access to the process. Surrogacy regulations are complex. Debates on potential reforms are often multidimensional and raise issues about, among other features, access bodily agency, economic compensation and exploitation, as well as transnational trafficking. This paper leverages a pre-registered conjoint experiment in Britain, where surrogacy reforms are actively being pursued, to identify which regulatory features can garner public support. The results indicate higher levels of public support for reforms that offer moderate financial compensation, facilitate access for non-heterosexual couples, permit overseas surrogacy arrangements, require legally binding guardianship transfers from birth, and have cross-party backing. Subgroup analysis shows minimal gender-based differences, but some large differences based on respondents' LGBT+ and partisan identities.
public opinion, surrogacy, assisted reproductive technology, Conjoint experiment, morality politics, public policy
Turnbull-Dugarte, Stuart J.
e25c6280-842c-407f-a961-6472eea5d845
Turnbull-Dugarte, Stuart J.
e25c6280-842c-407f-a961-6472eea5d845
Turnbull-Dugarte, Stuart J.
(2024)
A Handmaid’s Tale? Support for surrogacy reform: experimental evidence from Britain.
European Journal of Politics and Gender.
(In Press)
Abstract
Aspiring parents who are unable to have biological children increasingly rely on gestational surrogacy. This practice, while longstanding, remains controversial. Despite domestic prohibitions, several states are considering liberalizing access to the process. Surrogacy regulations are complex. Debates on potential reforms are often multidimensional and raise issues about, among other features, access bodily agency, economic compensation and exploitation, as well as transnational trafficking. This paper leverages a pre-registered conjoint experiment in Britain, where surrogacy reforms are actively being pursued, to identify which regulatory features can garner public support. The results indicate higher levels of public support for reforms that offer moderate financial compensation, facilitate access for non-heterosexual couples, permit overseas surrogacy arrangements, require legally binding guardianship transfers from birth, and have cross-party backing. Subgroup analysis shows minimal gender-based differences, but some large differences based on respondents' LGBT+ and partisan identities.
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Accepted/In Press date: 25 June 2024
Keywords:
public opinion, surrogacy, assisted reproductive technology, Conjoint experiment, morality politics, public policy
Identifiers
Local EPrints ID: 492003
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/492003
ISSN: 2515-1088
PURE UUID: 8f03f0fb-7dda-4165-b3d7-4a2949902740
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Date deposited: 11 Jul 2024 16:36
Last modified: 12 Jul 2024 02:06
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