CHILDFREE CONCEPT, SURROGACY AS WELL AS IN VITRO FERTILIZATION UNDER THE PRIMS OF JEREMY BENTHAM’S UTILITARIA NISM AND IMMANUEL KANT’S DOCT RINE OF THE MOTIVE

Summary. The modern society faces multiple struggles in the sphere of increase of the population level. Thus

Results of the research.The postulate of having children and becoming parents remains one of the most acute issue of our nowadays realities.More and more people decide to postpone their parenthood, or decline this opportunity in general, while others enjoy their status of being parents to multiple kids.Some people struggle to conceive a child, while others agree on sterilization and being "childfree couple" for ever.Each decision or a life status is usually based not only on a specific attitude to life of some individuals, but also on numerous issues/beliefs/postulates of the society they live in.

Table 1.
The 2022 Revision of World Population Prospects by the United Nations [1].
While analyzing the general World's tendency to having children, or the socalled World fertility's rate, for almost a decade, we will see the following indicators: [1], there was a slight increase in World's population during the years 50th (the Period after the Second World War), and, after the years of 60th there is a stable scrupulous and later slight, but still stable decrease in these indicators, which can be noticed even today.The increase of an aforementioned indicator could be explained by a natural try of the World's population to save their breed after the Great War, as a result of which there were millions and millions of people killed.The human breed was supposed to survive and, therefore, despite risks of hunger, lack of working places, lack of living and schooling facilities sometimes or economic crisis, people decided to strive for population index.However, later as financial crisis, multiple social factors appeared, the decision to give a birth to a child became more difficult, especially, under the prism of understanding that the number of population was preserved and it was the time to think more about personal prosperity, comfort and ordinary social opportunities.Thus, because of a highly strict self-oriented tendency, the index of fertility rate was decreased drastically in the period from 1960th till 2000s, than it was significantly stabilized (remaining negative though), and, finally, until today these indicators remains not just negative, but also decrease for 0,41% С ЕКЦІЯ Х Х ІІ .МЕД ИЧНІ Н АУК И Т А ГРО М АД СЬКЕ ЗДОРОВ ΄Я comparing to the previous year.According to the UN prediction, this tendency will remain on the same position at least until the year of 2100 with a probable slight increase of the rate in the future.
The tendency that we can observe currently, particularly, on the graphics that we have presented above, is based on specific economical, cultural, political and societal backgrounds.However, the table, which we have already provided may present only and exceptionally potential prognosis of changes in the fertility rate, while those factors of change continue to make an influence on the current situation.Current military conflicts, full-scale wars, in particular, those ones related to the Russian invasion on the Ukrainian territory, Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, as well as Israeli-Palestine conflict escalation (The last one, which took place on October 7th, 2023, lead to the uncontrolled rate of the population decrease because of both active participation in the military conflicts as combatants, or like civilian victims).The factors mentioned above will be called "active factors of the population decrease" for the sake of our research, while the "passive factors" we are going to analyze in our subsequent discussions.
Thus, as the passive factors, which we are supposed to mention under the prism of the tendency of the fertility rate decrease, are the attitudes towards In Vitro fertilization, child adoption, surrogacy motherhood as well, directly, childfree concept.As the last one should be emphasized as a direct reason of not-conceiving children, other ones become negative indicators literally because of the societal attitude to them.Therefore, as the main topic of our current research that we are going to analyze, we name: the societal and philosophical attitudes towards childfree concept, In Vitro Fertilization, Surrogacy Motherhood as well as child adoption.
Primarily, we shall explain the main postulates that will be emphasized in the following part of our discussion.Thus, the In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) is a complex series of procedures that can lead to pregnancy.It is a treatment for infertility or to prevent passing on genetic problems to a child.During IVF, mature eggs are collected from varies and fertilized by sperm in a lab.Then, a procedure is done to place one or more of the fertilized eggs, called embryos, in a uterus.One full cycle of IVF takes about 2-3 weeks.IVF is the most effective type of fertility treatment that involves that handling of eggs or embryos and sperm.IT can be done using a couple's own eggs and sperm, or it can involve eggs, sperm or embryos from a known or unknown donor.In some cases, a gestational carrier -someone who has an embryo implanted in the uterus -might be used [2].A gestational carrier, also called a surrogate, is a woman who carries and delivers a child for a couple or individual [3].Surrogate mothers are impregnated, therefore, through the use of the IVF.Because of the fact that the gestational carrier does not provide the egg, she is not genetically related to the child.Thus, the surrogacy can become a beneficial procedure for the following groups of individuals: 1) women without a functioning uterus; 2) women who have acquired disorders that make their uterus unsuitable for pregnancy, such as extensive fibroids or scarring of the uterine cavity; 3) women who have a medical condition that puts them at significant medical risk if they become pregnant; 4) women who have a history of recurrent pregnancy loss; 5) same-sex couples/marriages; 6) people prioritizing their profession/self-development, which unable them leaving the professional race for delivering a baby etc.And, finally, the H childfree concept: first of all, we shall mentioned, that the International Conference on Population and Development's "Programme of Action" was written and adopted in 1994.It begins with a set of fifteen principles, and the 8th principle says, in part "All couples and individuals have the basis right to decide freely and responsibly the number and spacing of their children and to have the information, education and means to do so" [4].Therefore, the childfree couples/individuals are those ones, who decide to have zero children.It differs them significantly from ones, who are being often called "childless", or those ones, who have liked to have children, but could not for any number of reasons, or those ones, who are "not-yet-parents", but plan to have children eventually.
As we have postulated before, those "special parental procedures" dedicated to having children in "non-traditional way" are usually related to couple that do not have a possibility to conceive, or to conceive healthy children, or to conceive kids without harm to mother.In contrary, those ones, who decide to support childfree concept sustain their decision by desire to live life for oneself, to proceed with professional self-development, to build a career etc.However, most people who are tended to blame this life solution forget that childfree decisions can also be based on lack of opportunity to conceive a healthy child or to conceive a child without harm to the mother's health.Alternatively, mother can experience multiple pregnancy losses because of which she does not feel ready to try once again.In addition, we shall definitely emphasize that the childfree life solution can also be tightly bounded with deep psycho-emotional traumas, because of which couple cannot use the surrogate mother's services or to adopt kid from the orphanage.These solutions also need a specific level of dedication and inner strength.
As the more typical and traditional way to become a kid without conceiving and delivering it, is to adopt the child from an orphanage.Societally it is more than acceptable to give a family to a kid, who has lost it as a result of accident, car crash, disease or merely because of financial struggles that its biological parents (or just mother) have been facing as a main obstacle to give up the child after its birth.In this case though, despite being fully societally acceptable, this way of becoming parents faces challenges from the part of potential foster parents."What if biological parents will appear in the future?What if they will change their mind and try to pick up the child by force?What will be the reaction of the child, when he/she will found out that his mummy/daddy are not his/her biological parents?What if this child will inherit severe diseases from his/her biological parents that will be impossible to cure?", these ones and million of other questions potential foster parents are keeping in their minds while thinking of opportunity to adopt the child from an orphanage.Whether the family ties will be stronger than blood ties, in case if biological parents will appear once upon a time?Shall the parents disclose that the child is adopted?How will the life look like after the disclosure?What if the truth will be disclosed by the third person?The potential psycho-emotional risks of the adoption are incredible.There are no doubts, that all children deserve a complete and happy family.Every child has to be loved and respected.Every child has to have equal rights and accesses to education, societal goods and opportunities.And this possibility exists legally, but does not exist practically.And, what is more, these are potential foster parents who usually face doubts towards possibility to adopt child from the They are afraid of potential societal judgements and inequality that they or their child may experience in the future because of his "adoption past".It is no more than the societal prejudice, moreover, there is also a possibility, that neither parents nor their child will face "those fears in real life".But, practically, all foster parents live with a time bomb, with a permanent fear before truths which could be disclosed.
We shall not forget either about inequalities in percentage of white/black children that are being adopted during every single year.The percent of white ones reaches the three times higher indicator on the scale of children that are more likely to be adopted comparing to black ones.This phenomenon is a direct discrimination because of the race, it takes place, it is actual, but nobody raises awareness about it.Eventually, there are too many struggles related to adoption issue, and even more speaking about possible inequalities and dangers that may child and/or his foster parents face in the future, and even more societal prejudices that make the percentage of possible foster parents remain incredibly low.Just not to forget, one additional issue to postulate in towards adoption:the stigmatized legal procedure and numerous requirements towards foster parents, beginning with an obligation to have a stable marriage (have a wife or husband), or refusing to give a kid to samesex couples.The traditional couple or 20 years long marriage cannot guarantee the best conditions and treatment for a kid, neither millions of dollars can.However, these old-fashioned requirements still remain stumbling block for single persons, non-married couples, same-sex couples that still can provide sometimes even more precious future for this kid, than the traditional pair.
At the same time, new tendencies, like those ones that we have been mentioned above, like In Vitro Fertilization, Surrogate Motherhood are being highly stigmatized in the society as well, and, even the legal solution existed since the year of 2008, do not resolve societal matters in this sphere.
In the XXI century there are numerous reasons why young people, married couple cannot or do not want to have children.They do not have financial or housing possibilities to raise a child, cannot give him/her a proper education (cannot afford paying for education in the university they want him/her to study); they want to live for themselves, enjoy the life "without the excessive responsibilities (nowadays, it seems to be quite important issue, while the generation of 60th-70th were rather more ready to either travel with little kids or to refuse traveling at all, while having babies, as well as they were more up to struggle financially, than the modern youngsters).The generations of nowadays cannot imagine themselves having children until they feel confident in their life, until they are stable financially, economically and, sometimes, psychically.The mental childhood indicators has increased significantly.Thus, people are tended to feel young and unready to become parents until they are even 40-45 years old.To add, currently existed tendency to share housing with parents until "youngsters" are 35-40 years old does not promote ideas of becoming married person or a parent either, as soon as this decision requires other level of responsibility, than this person has.Alternatively, person can have this level of responsibility, but decides to dedicate him/herself to going up the professional ladder.There are professions that will never tolerate "missing years".Such a professional is supposed to develop him/herself stably, Literally speaking, there are professions that do not tolerate parenthood until some specific period of time.Therefore, people could find themselves enabled to become parents only once they are 40-45 years old.This age, though, is not the best period to conceive and deliver offspring, as modern medical data claims.And mostly, not just because of numerous diseases, infections, dangers that have cumulated in the parent's organisms for years and now will be transferred to a child, but also because of a stable exhaustion, which is typical for people older than 30 years old.After the age of 35-40 people already cannot dedicate themselves completely to a 24h/day raising a child, while they are already more weak physically, than they were before.
Additionally, let us mention even young girls/women that cannot conceive and/or deliver a healthy child at all.Or, what is more than acceptable for our nowadays society: same-sex marriages.They will never be able to conceive and deliver a child by themselves.The legal background, which exists currently around the World tries to protect the rights of people in need of support to conceive and deliver babies.But, at the same time, the level of social prejudices and general societal judgements remain so high, that even with having appropriate legal possibility people decide not to become parents using modern parenting technologies that wee have mentioned above.Unfortunately, it is not just adoption, which brings numerous reasons to be afraid of while adopting a child.The IVF, surrogacy are also usually accompanied by social lack of acceptance.In theory, people can ask surrogate mother to deliver a kid for a couple, who cannot do it themselves personally, using their personal cells during IVF, but later, once kid is born, he/she will never be protected that this truth will not be disclosed and this person will suffer for his/her whole life because of bullying as a result of being "artificially conceived, delivered or even bough from the surrogate mother".The medical and legal documents accompanying the whole procedure of fertilization and surrogacy should be encrypted and the access to them is supposed to be denied.However, practically, once parents become suddenly a little kid, without sharing information of the woman's pregnancy or without being absent at work, the truth is being disclosed by itself.Sometimes, future parents disclose this truth personally to their friends, who are not able to keep this information for themselves and share this "secret" further.Thus, the kid even while being born in India (India has 3 times lower prices for surrogate mother services comparing to other countries of the World), even despite of being genetically bounded to his/her biological parents (as the fertilization mostly is being performed with an application of cells of real parents, not surrogate ones), those kids are not fully accepted by the society.Unfortunately, people all around the World are not completely ready to accept such kids, who were conceived, delivered or born not in traditional way.What is more, emotional exclusion and suffering will accompany this kid even after becoming an adult.Those reasons make potential parents quite often refuse having children with application of modern technologies, because children may face the same struggles as adopted ones.As a quite curious tendency that we are supposed to mention here, we shall talk about the significant level in stigmatization of society comparing to the level of legal practice.Traditionally, though, these are legal acts that are mostly "too oldfashioned and non-modern" comparing to people's attitudes.However, speaking С ЕКЦІЯ Х Х ІІ .МЕД ИЧНІ Н АУК И Т А ГРО М АД СЬКЕ ЗДОРОВ ΄Я about conceiving and delivering children the tendency is absolutely opposite, and the law stays ahead of the curve of people's judgement.Nobody really cares about other's worries, diseases, inabilities, problems, struggles, fears, obstacles.Every difference is painful in every kind of society in our modern World.This very tendency makes lots of people around the globe choose a childfree concept as an alternative to all struggles they may face because of kids' adoption, IVF/surrogacy.Therefore, there are no doubts that sometimes childfree attitude to parenthood may not be completely the couple's decision, but a result of fear towards societal judgement.This is the first reason, why social prejudices, judgements and attitudes towards people "that are different and choose to become parents in different way" have to be changed.The attitude towards such people is supposed to become more prohuman than it is now, at least.More acceptive global society will make the global fertility rate increase, due to the fact that all potentially born children, despite their race, way of conceiving / delivering will be hearty welcomed by people around.
The second part of our research we shall dedicate to philosophical discussions of modern procreation procedures, namely, how acceptable or non-acceptable would those medical procedures of the supported parenthood be, in case if they were analyzed under the prism of Immanuel Kant's and Jeremy Bentham's theories.
Jeremy Bentham, an English moral philosopher and legal reformer, founded a doctrine of utilitarianism, with the main idea: "the highest principle of morality is to maximize happiness, the overall balance of pleasure and pain".According to Bentham, the right thing to do, is whatever will maximize utility.By "utility" he means whatever produces pleasure or happiness, and whatever prevents pain or suffering.Bentham postulates: "We are all governed by the feelings of pain and pleasure.They are our "sovereign masters".They govern us in everything we do and also determine what we ought to do.The utilitarian philosophy recognizes this fact, and makes it the basis of moral and political life.Maximizing utility is a principle not only for individuals but also for legislators.In deciding what laws or policies to enact, a government should do whatever will maximize the happiness of the community as a whole [5].In real life this theory will be reflected in the following way: from the point of view of the society, people try to prevent painful experiences from social judgement, which appears to be the worst feeling in the person's social life.Social opinion may influences all spheres of the individual life and make this individual make decisions that are better or "more appropriate" "from the society's point of view" but not his/her ones.In the our modern realities, we, as people, can choose to be unhappy, even not to become parent, however, this is the most important and happy function and/or mission of our life, just not to make "cruel eyes" make judgements about us.Parenthood is happiness, but may become a pain from the society's perspective, as the community do not fully accept IVF, surrogacy or even childfree concept.Such a harmful invasion of the social opinion into the individual's life make this person feel insecure, having lack of privacy, being under constant supervision.Individual develops a fear towards making steps in parenthood into the direction of his/her own happiness."Will this way of parenthood be accepted by my community?Will everybody understand me?I cannot share my personal obstacles, therefore, the community will see the situation only from the perspective of decision to use surrogate mother and In Vitro Fertilization.".Even people, who become decisive H childfree, sometimes, take this decision to psychically "punish society" for its cruel and inflexible judgement, which do not accept "unideal personal circumstances".
At the same time, legal system, as well as government try to achieve the same goal: their desire is to increase fertility rate in most of states around the World.They provide legal opportunities to optimize process of IVF, some governments prohibit surrogacy in exchange of payment, but allows it in general, people are able to travel from the USA or other countries to use this kind of services in India, where this procedure is three times cheaper than in other states.Later, parent will most probably not have any problems with legalization of a newborn "from India".There are significant failures in legal regulations: we do remember cases, where the surrogate mother recognizes the child as hers and refuse giving up the child to his/her potential (even biological) parents.Under some perspective, this way of legal failure can be recognized as an "additional pain" towards surrogacy services, but it is mostly because of unideal regulation and some kind of lack of acceptance of human feeling from the perspective of lawyers producing legal regulations, who cannot completely "describe" mother's feelings from the perspective of the surrogate mother towards the newborn, who is not her biological son or daughter.But, this issue does not have any opportunity to be fully regulated, as human feelings cannot be "completely described by the contract".Therefore, here we are talking about pale risks because of interpersonal relationships in the link surrogate mother -biological parents -newborn, which can be definitely solved by rational attitude of adults.
Thus, the legal system accepts surrogacy, IVF and even childfree concept, as we have postulated above.However, even the almost ideal legal regulation cannot be "a pleasure" higher than the pain "produced by a heavy social judgement" against those attitudes towards parenthood.Therefore, the balance for potential "nonordinary parents" is usually being found by the side of being either childfree (and, therefore, partially unhappy, because it is only a personal experience), or trying to become parents in "more acceptable societally way" by adopting kids (what also cannot do happy all of people, though, because of being barely available for all couples that need it).Therefore, legal system desires happiness through increasing of parenthood and fertility rate of the society, individuals desire it as well, but the global society is gotten stuck back in middle ages, literally speaking.People mostly are not ready to allow innovations step into their life and do not want to allow "non-ordinary" families and/or parents enter their realities.For many people nowadays it brings exceptionally painful experiences and decrease their level of social comfort, because in real life they do not increase their level of life happiness by balancing between pain and pleasure, but by trying to avoid deeper pain by choosing easier one.Legal system is supposed to be more directed into making society more open-minded and acceptable towards non-ordinary families, and only in such way fertility rate will be able to increase naturally.Otherwise, there will be no brilliant legal strategy in the government able to optimize the current situation.
According to Immanuel Kant's theory of the motive, the morality is not about maximizing happiness or any other end.Instead, it is about respecting persons as ends in themselves.He claims that something giving people more pleasure does not make it right.Therefore, the mere fact that the majority, however big, favors a certain ΄Я law, however intensely, does not make the law right.Kant argus that morality cannot be based on merely empirical consideration, such as interests, wants, desires, and preferences people have at any given time.These factors are variable and contingent, he points out, so they could hardly serve as the basis for universal moral principles -such as universal human rights.He claims also that the desire for happiness misunderstands what morality is about.Basing morality on interests and preferences destroys its dignity.It does not teach us how to distinguish right from wrong, but "only to become better at calculation".He argues that the supreme principle of morality is a "pure practical reason".Kant claims that every person is worthy of respect, not because we own ourselves but because we are rational beings, capable of reason; we are also autonomous beings, capable of acting and choosing freely.Kant does not mean that we always succeed in acting rationally, or in choosing autonomously.Sometimes we do and sometimes we do not.He means only that we have the capacity for reason, and for freedom, and that this capacity is common to human beings as such.However, according to his postulates, our capacity for reason is not the only capacity we possess.We also have the capacity to feel pleasure and pain.Kant recognizes that we are sentient creatures as well as rational ones.But, the feelings like pleasure and pain cannot be our "sovereign masters".Therefore, we cannot say that we are driven by the desire to seek pleasure and avoid pain.Our capacity for reason is, thus, bound up with our capacity for freedom.Taken together, these capacities make us distinctive, and set us apart from mere animal existence.They make us more than mere creatures of appetite.Eventually, the moral worth of an action, according to Kant, is not in the consequences that flow from it, but in the intention from which the act is done.What matters is the motive, and the motive must be of a certain kind.What matter is doing the right things, because it is right, not for some ulterior motive [5].
On the basis of Kant;s theory, parenthood cannot be merely based on feelings of pain or pleasure.Simply speaking, it cannot bring either pure painful experience with social judgement, or pure pleasure of being parents in the brilliant family.His theory is more applicable to the social attitude as well as individual's decision on parenthood, because of the aforementioned social opinion.The legal system is still better and more optimized for parenthood of all categories and kinds of people, parents and couples.It is still not ideal, but it recognizes basic needs and goals of the society development more efficiently than the society does.However, ordinary individuals struggle to distinguish reason, moral acts from something what will bring them "pleasure in the end and will eliminate probability of social pain".According to Kant, we shall be distanced from possible consequences of our actions and do exceptionally something, what is reasonable and right, no matter, whether it will bring us pain or pleasure.In contrast to this postulate, we shall emphasize that we, as social creatures, will most probably recognize and accept a possibility to act "reasonably and right" in every single situation, particularly, speaking about our education, occupation, accommodation, way we live, speak, act etc.Because our modern society allows us to.However, on the contrary, our society does not allow us to decide freely on parenthood in the subsequent development.It means, the more free we are to decide about "how we can become parents", the less we are able to distance ourselves from possible consequences, because WE DO care about, how H are children will feel in our community, whether they will be bullied because of some reason or not, whether their "non-ordinary" birth story will make them equal or will possibly exclude them from our society?Their unhappiness will be ours one.The unhappiness and social exclusion of such kids will be unhappinesses of their parents.Therefore, in contrast to Kant, acute issue of modern ways of becoming parents, like IVF, surrogacy and even adoption and/or the attitude of childfree couples cannot be recognized as one, decision on which could be taken without taking into account possible consequences, as actually those consequences brings us "social pain".Unfortunately, speaking about modern types of parenthood we are not able to go along the Kant's theory, we still gotten stuck by the theory of the utilitarianism, because our social pleasure brings us happiness and success, while social pain brings us destruction.Thus, until social prejudices will not be eliminated, we cannot speak about complete success of policy on increasing the fertility rate in any kind of country.
Conclusions. 1. Nowadays, the fertility rate in the countries among the World is tended to decrease in 0,41% every single year.
2. Fertility rate depends not only on successful legal policy of states, but also on social judgements and prejudices that control people's act and attitudes in a hidden way.Lack of complete social acceptance towards IVF and surrogacy, dual social opinion on children's adoption, mostly negative perception of non-ordinary couples, like same-sex couples, couples that prioritize their time for business instead of delivering baby by themselves; lack of empathy towards health problems of others force multiple people to become childfree, what is also almost "socially negative attitude".
3. According to the utilitarian theory, main sovereigns of the individual's life are pain and pleasure.We try to reach our highest level of happiness by balancing between increasing level of pleasure and decreasing level of pain.
4. For non-ordinary couples, couples with professional development attitudes or with health problems are mostly forced to achieve quasi level of pleasure by refusing becoming parents to maximize their "social happiness".According to the fact, that their community is not ready to accept their parenthood as it is, they choose the "easiest pain" by being blamed for not being parents instead of being "not those kind of parents".Therefore, same-sex marriages/couples, people with health problems and other people struggling to become parents in traditional way have to choose between easier and deeper pain, instead of balancing between pain and pleasure.
5. According to the Kant's theory of morality, people are not supposed to be governed only by pain and pleasure, they should choose reasonable and right act without taking into account consequences.6.Our societal status makes impossible to us to be separated from the force of consequences of all decisions that were taken.On the contrary, we shall take them into account by doing everything in our life.Social success if almost everything for every individual, therefore, sometimes people are forced to decide against their own "pleasures" to go along with the social pleasure, while the individual will suffer his own pain.People have to sacrifice their own pleasure not to suffer social pain.

С ЕКЦІЯ Х Х ІІ
. МЕД ИЧНІ Н АУК И Т А ГРО М АД СЬКЕ ЗДОРОВ ΄Я Modern ways of parenthood despite a great legal background become social suffering in a real life, leading to childfree status for numerous couples that actually desire to become parents.
7. The current level of stigmatization in our society towards In Vitro Fertilization, surrogacy services, adoption and childfree status are supposed to become more accepted and tolerated in the society.This direction has to become priority for modern governmental policy around the World.Once prejudices and hard societal judgement will be eliminated, the fertility rate will be qualitatively increased.