Characteristics of a Transcultural Ethical Framework for Cross-border Reproductive Tourism: Insights from Existing Studies

Abstract

Reproductive tourism is the act of crossing an international border to seek assisted reproductive services, which can include maternal surrogacy. Ethical analyses of this phenomenon may be poorly served by considering the Western liberal framework alone. In previous studies, we identified 16 domains of ethical interest arising from this industry. In this paper, we sought perspectives in the scholarly literature that inform the development of an alternative to the Western liberal framework, incorporating more communalistic values that were then applied to the pre-identified domains. We concluded that a hybrid Western-communalistic framework, appropriate for helping to guide ethical analyses of reproductive tourism, incorporates an encouragement of third-party advocates to overcome power gaps between pertinent actors, and assumes the existence of a universal morality, such that a uniform standard of care can be expected regardless of cultural context.