You want a baby. Is it ethical to choose surrogacy?

Editor’s note, August 23, 8 am ET: We’re bringing you some of our best-loved Your Mileage May Vary columns while Sigal Samuel is on parental leave.

The one below was originally published in February.

This unconventional advice column offers you a unique framework for thinking through moral dilemmas.

It’s based on value pluralism: the idea that each of us has multiple values that are equally valid but that often conflict with each other.

Submit your own question here .

I’m a woman in my 30s and I think I want to have a child, but I have a health condition that makes it harder (not impossible) to get pregnant than for most women.

It would also make pregnancy more uncomfortable and physically disfiguring than it is for many pregnant people.

It wouldn’t be permanently disabling, but the physical effects would be bad enough that I really don’t want to be pregnant.

I’m fortunate enough that I can probably afford to get a surrogate through a reputable agency.

But surrogacy is frowned upon and often considered unethical.

Long ago, I knew someone who said she loved the idea of being pregnant and providing gestation as a service to other people, so maybe in theory, it is possible for someone to freely choose to be a surrogate without being coerced by financial need? But even if it could be done ethically, there’s such a stigma around it and I fear being judged by friends and family.

There seems to be a sense that there’s something wrong, unnatural, selfish, or unwomanly in wanting to have a biological child but not wanting your own body to be the vessel for it.

Plus, it’s not like I’m the only person in the world for whom pregnancy would suck.

I think my experience probably would be worse than average, but pregnancy is just an unpleasant thing overall so I don’t think I can claim it would be so uniquely bad for me that I’m justified in wanting to pay to use someone else’s body.