Gay Surrogacy, Intentionality and Tahitian Parenting

Abstract

In Australia throughout the 1980s and 1990s, anxieties about new reproductive technology crystallised especially conspicuously around surrogacy, resulting in legislative disfavour for the practice. Since then there has been a partial de-problematisation of surrogacy. This article examines the extent to which the increased legal acceptability of surrogacy in Australia has extended to its use by gay men. It also examines judicial approaches to federal provisions relating to the ascription of parental status with respect to children born into surrogacy arrangements, and reflects upon their impact on gay families. Finally, because gay surrogacy foregrounds parenting intention as the decisive ground for allocation of parental status, the article reflects upon the nature of surrogacy in the West by engaging in a comparative analysis of Tahitian parenting, which traditionally has accommodated intentional parenthood on a large scale, through the institutionalisation of adoption practices. The fact that in Tahiti sexuality- and gender-variant people may figure as adoptive parents makes the comparison all the more interesting. The article elaborates on the policy implications of the insight that this comparative analysis yields into the nature of surrogacy.