Abstract

These recent years, despite significant advances for the rights of homosexuals and lesbian couples, surrogate motherhood is still prohibited for gay couples under French Law. This is justified by the rejection of the exploitation of women’s bodies, the rejection of the commodification of children—both linked to the “unavailability” of human body and in order to respect “human dignity”—and the rejection of “King Money” which is said to be behind this double exploitation and commodification of human bodies. However, expressions such as “contrary to dignity” and “degradation” are terms with primarily moral connotations that have been reintegrated afterwards into the legal sphere. This highlights, through this lexicon, the porous boundaries between legality and morality. Aren’t we transforming a state governed by the rule of law into a moral state through legal moralism and paternalism? The aim of this article is to show how legal moralism has gradually been constructed around surrogate motherhood, by outlining the history in French law of the judicialization of the current concept of “dignity”, and by highlighting the paradoxes and contradictions that arise when this concept of dignity is used today to prohibit certain practices such as surrogacy, insofar as this leads to the reinforcement of social inequalities.