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Buying Babies — by Rachel Lu
I’m writing a paper about “third party reproduction.” If you’re not familiar, this is what they call it when a person or couple decide to make a baby but involve a third party in the process, either as a source of genetic material or as a host for purposes of gestation. Surrogacy and artificial insemination are two of the primary examples.
Third-party reproduction is going to become a big bioethical debate over the next few years. It’s not a new thing, but the pressures to make it easier and cheaper are intensifying rapidly. The reason is obvious. Same-sex couples are creating a market for children. The fertility industry is looking to meet that demand.
I’ve been working on an analogy and I’m curious how it strikes people. I’d be grateful if people would tell me what intuitions they have about it.
Suppose we have an educated gentleman living in the antebellum South. He and his wife are unable to have children. This is a source of terrible grief to her. The gentleman isn’t racist, but he also isn’t a committed abolitionist; as a copious reader of history he sees slavery together with war, poverty, prostitution, political corruption, and a million other evils, as a part of the human story. It isn’t beautiful, but it’s a thing people do and he doesn’t feel personally called to interfere.
Since his wife so desperately wants a child, however, he sees an obvious solution. He goes to the local slave market and buys her a baby. He tells his wife if she loves him like her own she’ll find that this child can satisfy her maternal longings. She believes him, and they raise the baby as their son. When he reaches adulthood, they draw up the paperwork and formally emancipate him. They help him to find a job in the north where he can live and work as a free man.
How does this scenario strike people? Is it morally defective to acquire a child through a slave market, given the intention to love and nurture him? If so, can we find a morally significant difference between the couple that buys their baby from a slave market and the couple that buys their baby through a commercial surrogacy arrangement?
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It’s important to differentiate between slavery and involuntary servitude. The 13th Amendment mentions both and abolished both, because they are not the same thing. Slavery is a diminished status. Involuntary servitude it to force somebody to work against his will–two different things. We’re talking about slavery (diminished status) on this thread. We are not talking about involuntary servitude (forcing somebody to work against his will).
If making somebody the object of a contract is not a form of slavery (defined as a diminished status), then why were humans no longer bought and sold after the Civil War?
Jennifer, as you’re so fond of saying, children are different.
If my wife and I were to pay a woman to allow us to adopt her child, that in now way affects or diminishes the child’s rights. The kid doesn’t become my slave; they become my kid.
Now, you may argue that there are consequences to this transaction that make it bad social policy, as — for instance — Ed G has done. That’s an honorable position. But this nonsense about slavery is simply nonsense.
For some reason I can’t like comments right now, so I just wanted to second this.
When you say, “Children are different,” I don’t know what that means in this context. It sound like, “Children aren’t people with their own rights,” but reasonably certain you wouldn’t argue that. So what does that mean?
I have read stories of children of ART who have expressed offense or anger when they find out that consideration was part of their conception.
“…I can’t say I’m for or against sperm donning, because I guess some kids don’t mind… but what people tend to forget is what about the kids who do mind? Do we matter? Why should our childhood and our feelings be sacrificed, so our folks can have the parenthood experience of their dreams? I thought parenting was about the cute babies, not the parents.. I just feel weird about it. I’m sure Im just some terrible daughter and I probably don’t matter… I mean, if I did, my dad would probably want to see me, but whatever. My dad is a stranger, who jacked off to woman-trashing porn, and sold his sperm to a woman he doesn’t know on the Internet, for sixty dollars. Thats the dignity of my conception, two strangers exchanging money for ‘materials’ over Craig’s list, and that’s all I will ever know about him.
FYI it burns like hell….”
“I don’t much like the fact that one half of me, one half of the me that sits here in this body that types this, was conveniently stored in a vial for a few years somewhere in a laboratory. I do not like it at all that I only exist because a graduate needed money to pay for his doctorate. Most donors would be decent enough to lie about their intentions, say they donate to help needy families, but my father was quite blatant. He told the complete truth on the donation forms, that he needed the money for a Ph. D. and that he wasn’t donating to ‘contribute to his fellow man.’
I know my father is not stupid in the slightest. He has a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science, a Master’s degree in Human Developmental Psychology, and now because of the money he got from me and my 22 siblings, a Doctorate in Counseling Psychology. But one wonders how sick and twisted he had to have been in order to tell his future children quite plainly that he didn’t want them and they only exist because he needed money for school. He knew better than anyone else what that would do to his children’s minds, being well acquainted with how the human mind works and reacts, he knew the pain those words would inflict.
“To any potential donor my word would be, ‘don’t’. Please do not condone the practice of depriving children of their families. Because no matter how much anyone may want a baby, donor conception has been and will always be about the child. Because I am part of a generation of children that derive from billion dollar corporations commercializing life, corporations that sell human beings. The effects of and reactions to this process vary from donor child, but the overwhelming response is that we are damaged individuals because of donor conception. We walk around with holes in our chests because of the uncertainty and injustice.”
“… When I think about that I swing to the other extreme, feeling like some kind of freak of nature, alive because my mom was lonely, and felt like a failure for not getting married and having kids. It seems odd and horrorible at the same time that two people who have never even laid eyes on each other have a child. I hate that my dad got paid. I hate that he was probably just some guy who was broke and needed a little bit of pocket cash. No matter how great of a guy he was, he just wanted the money. And even though I think about him all the time, he has no idea I that exist. So, even if we do have all these things in common, any connection we have is just in my head. He probably has a family of his own, which I’d have no place in.”
Emphasis added:
“…It wasn’t for another year or so until I started to ask questions and grow curious. I remember searching on the internet, trying to find a way to find him. Everyone told me that I wasn’t going to find anything, that it’s hopeless, if he wants to be anonymous then he will stay anonymous. Everyone told me to stop trying, so that’s what I did, I stopped. Don’t get me wrong, I still thought about who I was periodically, however, I didn’t see the point in wasting my time to find this mystery man who did not want to be found. 6 years later, I’ve begun my search again, and I am not taking no for an answer. My heritage should be a natural given right. The fact that adults made such a big decision for me before I was even conceived, baffles me. I understand that my mom just wanted a baby, but these sperm banks, they are just in it for the money. And obviously the sperm donors are selling their sperm just for the money too. At what point will we stop and look at this as selling a child? Because that is what it ultimately feels like. “
This one is particularly relevant to this discussion. Emphasis added:
“There is coldness surrounding my conception, when I bother to think about it. I was not the latent effect of mutual attraction and passion between two people, as most children are. I was not a mistake or an accident, happy or unhappy. I was carefully planned, my traits were picked out of a catalog, my conception was the result of an oversized turkey baster and prayer. My mother never fails to remind me how much time and money she spent to bring me into the world, as most any mother is wont to do to some degree. She doesn’t know it, but I feel deeply indebted to her, as though I owe it to her to live up to her expectations and vicarious whims because my life is not mine to lead as I please — she purchased it from the Build-A-Baby Workshop. “
As has been repeated by numerous people in response to such quotations and links. The plural of anecdote is not data. You do not prove your point by quoting disaffected people who are the product of TPR or adoption, any more than I would disprove it by quoting people who don’t feel that way. Much like the insistence on drawing comparisons to slavery, it is a way to avoid the substance of the ethical question.
“…My desire to know who my biological father is has not really diminished in the years since I learned of his existence. I don’t particularly like him since I feel he gave me the ultimate blow-off when he agreed to sire me in exchange for money and a promise never to find out who I am or even how many of us exist, and he accepted this arrangement as a good deal. I don’t particularly value his decision making skills for the same reason. I don’t want back child support payments, as some donors fear. I don’t want his love or to call him “Dad” — I already have a dad. I don’t want to be on his family’s Christmas cards or to take up an inordinate amount of his time. I just want to know who he is. I want to know if I have siblings and who they are.”
“I am a young woman who is asked to keep quiet about her innermost conflict. I entered college in the fall and have had an emotional ride coming to terms with being a donor conceived person. I need a place to vent my feelings. I just wish I could find someone who would understand. I feel like I am suffering alone with this. I don’t want to disappoint anyone. If I could have one wish it would be to just hear the donor’s voice. I would love to ask him the most basic questions about himself. I wonder why he did it. It bothers me that there was money involved in my conception. I resent the donor for that. I feel as though he took advantage of my parents and the parents of my countless half siblings. “
There are more stories here:
AnonymousUs.org
Here’s the ethical question. Rachel asked:
“Is it morally defective to acquire a child through a slave market, given the intention to love and nurture him? If so, can we find a morally significant difference between the couple that buys their baby from a slave market and the couple that buys their baby through a commercial surrogacy arrangement?”
The quotes are from people who have lived what we are discussing here. Thus, they are relevant.
Whether TPR is a slave market is A large part of what is in dispute. Beyond that, given the large number of children involved in TPR and the fact that a certain number of people are going to be upset about anything, simply repeating the laments of those who feel aggrieved does not prove anything. You have to show that these views are held by the majority of TPR children. What’s more, you really need to show that a majority of TPR children would prefer not to exist or that a majority of adoptive children would have preferred either to not exist or be raised by their birth mothers.
Exactly. When push comes to shove, I highly doubt they would prefer not to exist. Call it a hunch.
I think what this shows is that TPR is a form of aggression, aggression against the child. It is the use of physical force to deliberately deprive a child from his genetic heritage, for no purpose other than to please the parents.
Would you say this to the people who wrote those stories?
I would, but I don’t see how that is relevant to our discussion. I’m not denying that the people you quoted feel that way, nor am I denying the reality of their pain. I am saying that anecdotal feelings are not a sound way to discuss policy. Absent evidence to the contrary, I see no reason to take the views expressed by the people you quoted as being representative of the TPR-conceived population generally. Based on my own anecdotal experience of having adopted siblings and TPR-conceived extended family, I greatly doubt that the quotes you provide are more than a vocally disaffected minority. (The difference being, I wouldn’t expect you to change your views on the matte based on anecdotes I could provide.)
From the front page of the website link:
“I want to be angry, I really do, but I also can’t wish that my mom would take it back, because then I wouldn’t even be here.”
Re the validity of feelings – I think we’ve had this conversation before. Everybody’s feelings about their childhood and upbringing are valid, but everybody’s feelings about their childhood and upbringing are unique – to their own childhood and upbringing. Just because we feel something very strongly doesn’t make that feeling true for everybody in the world who is in our situation. Accepting that is an important part of growing up.
Re this website – I’m sure it serves a valuable purpose, giving people who need it a safe space to express whatever they feel. But the people who post there are a completely self selecting group. People who have no problem with their TPC are not going to be hanging out the website – they’ll be off complaining about something else. This self selection is what keeps the info on the website moving from anecdotes to meaningful data.
Thank you. That was very eloquent.
I meant that the “buying” your talking about isn’t slavery because the child isn’t becoming a slave: it has precisely the same rights on one end of the transaction as it had on the other.
We’ve gone around in circles on this before, but what’s really being sold here are parental rights, not children.
I think it’s one thing for a person in that situation to say this. He’s expressing frustration at an injustice, which is something he should do. It’s very different thing for others to say it to him. Those others were not subject to the injustice, and in certain cases they may have an incentive to perpetuate the injustice.
It’s as if our society is sinking lower and lower, in the sense of what is owed to children. That’s what the “You’re alive, aren’t you?” argument sounds like to me–as long as the person is alive, that should be good enough.
Kids in unjust structural situations have a strong incentive to pretend that all is well. Not only that, but as a youngster it’s very difficult to understand and articulate the structural injustice–when you’re young, it’s just an unarticulated feeling/impression.
If I remember correctly, you were raised by both your married bio parents. Yes? I was not, and I can tell you that it takes decades to have the courage to discuss painful structural injustices with those who perpetrated them (parents).
And what rights would those be?
The rights we recognize in any and every child.
Honestly, I don’t even know what you’re looking for here.
Jennifer, I can’t discount your pain and suffering; I truly can’t.
But I do think you’re inappropriately extrapolating from your own experience and of those on the Anonymous website. I can’t say I know the inner lives of friends who’ve been adopted perfectly, but most of them seem happy and emotionally healthy, despite having had similar experiences to yours.
I also think you’re presuming that being raised by your birth parents is automatically a wonderful thing. It is if they’re wonderful people, but it can also be traumatic if they’re awful people.
” I am saying that anecdotal feelings are not a sound way to discuss policy.”
I’m not presenting the stories in a vacuum. They reinforce my argument that something unjust is happening.
Any policy change first starts with anecdotal stories of people who need the change. Aren’t you in favor of TPR because of the stories of infertile couples? Without them, TPR does not exist.
Jennifer Thieme: It’s as if our society is sinking lower and lower, in the sense of what is owed to children. That’s what the “You’re alive, aren’t you?” argument sounds like to me–as long as the person is alive, that should be good enough. It should be good enough when the alternative is non-existence. This isn’t to say you can’t be miffed that your existence relied on non-ideal circumstances, that’s fair. But the fact of the matter is you’re only able to be miffed because the only way you could have been made happens to upset you.
Let me address the second paragraph first. I have never argued that being raised in an intact family is automatically a wonderful thing. But I do argue that there is no structural injustice there. The adoption process, as I have repeatedly argued elsewhere, shows respect for the original family before assigning a new one. Thus, adoption is not a structural injustice.
In regards to the first paragraph: people can still be happy in unjust situations. Since I was raised under a profound structural injustice, I do understand structural injustices. I think I understand them better than people who were not raised under them.