ONTOLOGICAL AND ETHICAL ISSUES IN THE PRACTICE OF ABÁNIBÍMO IN YORÙBÁ SOCIETY

Abstract

Abánibímọ, the Yoruba practice of surrogacy, is an alternative procreative method informed by family exigencies in Yoruba culture. Previous studies, which are largely Western, have focused mainly on the legality of surrogacy to the neglect of the African (Yoruba) perspective, which emphasises the significance of the child and the surrogate mother. The study was, therefore, designed to examine abánibímọ, with a view to establishing the moral and ontological status of the surrogate motherand the child, which transcends the legality of surrogacy. Borden Bowne’s notion of intrinsic worth, which advocates the supreme value of the person as key to the discernment of human wellbeing, was adopted. The interpretive design was used. Texts examined in Ethics included Borden Bowne’s Personalism, Christine Sistare’s Reproductive Freedom and Women’s Freedom (RFWF), Elly Teman’s My Bun, Her Oven (MBHO), Leon Kass’ Making Babies Re-visited (MBR), Andrea Dworkin’s Right-wing Women (RW). In African Philosophy, Joseph Awolalu and Ade Dopamu’s West African Traditional Religion (WATR), Adegboyega Akintola’s Yoruba Ethics and Metaphysics (YEM), Segun Gbadegesin’s Eniyan: the Yoruba Concept of Person (EYCP), and Bolatito Lanre-Abass’ Surrogate Motherhood and the Predicament of the African Woman (SMPAW) were interrogated. These texts dealt with critical issues relating to surrogacy, Yoruba ontology, and familyhood. The philosophical tools of conceptual clarification and critical analysis were used. The RFWF and MBHO reveal that surrogacy gains support because of the autonomy it grants infertile women in reproduction, enabling them to fulfil a fundamental human longing. The MBR and RW hold that there is a need to rethink the rationality of Western surrogacy because it is preponderantly mediated by legality. Since the surrogate mother has no legal right to be a parent to the child she gestates, she psychologically and emotionally detaches herself in ways that disenable bonding with the child (RW, MBHO). The YEM, WART and Personalism show that every human person possesses an intrinsic worth which is not determined by the manner, place or arrangement of birth. The surrogate mother and the child are believed to possess moral, social and spiritual significance. Consequently, while the child is taken over by the contracting mother after the abánibímọ arrangement is over, the surrogate mother is not thereby discarded as a consequence of the end of the contract (SMPAW, EYCP). Critical intervention demonstrated that in Yoruba ontology, the essence of a person is received from Olódùmare and that the significance and value of the surrogate mother and the child lie in their being, and not in the legality or otherwise of the abánibímọ arrangement through which a child came into the world. The Yoruba cultural practice of abánibímọ transcends the legality of the western surrogacy practice to emphasise the moral and ontological status of the surrogate mother and the child.