Original Article

Determination of the attitudes of the GATA Nursing School students about the surrogate motherhood

Received Date: 04.12.2009 Accepted Date: 14.12.2009 Gulhane Med J 2009;51(4):216-219

In the present study performed on the students of Gulhane Military Nursing School, we aimed to determine the probable choices and attitudes of the participants towards surrogate motherhood which is not legal in our country (n=281) when they would learn that they would never have a baby in their future life due to infertility. The ones who have positive attitudes towards both adopting a child and accepting someone as a surrogate mother are the largest group (47.7%, n=131). On the other hand 11% of the participants answered as “I accept the situation but do nothing” (n=34). When the question “who do you accept as the surrogacy” was asked to the 169 participants who declared that she could accept someone as surrogacy, those who preferred the choice “absolutely someone unanimous” constituted the largest group (53.3%). When the question “Dou you accept to be a surrogate mother for someone else?” was asked to the participants, the ratio of those who declared a positive attitude was 18.1% (n=51). The distribution of the choices related to having a baby was statistically significantly different among the students of the different grades. The distributions of the answers to the questions “Whom do you accept as a surrogate mother baby?” and “For whom do you accept to be surrogate mother?” were also statistically significantly different between the students of the different grades. In conclusion, the proportion of the participants who declared a positive attitude towards surrogate motherhood in the present study, which has been one of the initial studies performed on the topic of surrogate motherhood was higher than those of the similar studies. It will be beneficial to analyze the issue in detail in future studies which will be performed in different target groups.

Keywords: Nursing student, infertility, surrogate motherhood, attitude, Turkey