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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?
Published in General
&blockquote cite=”http://ricochet.com/buying-babies/comment-page-54/comment-1041860″>Jennifer Thieme: 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.
I’m not sure other everyone in your situation sees their condition as the result of a structural injustice. I don’t question that many do and that it’s a source of profound pain, but I don’t think it’s not as clear-cut as you’re presenting.
Some weeks ago, in the context of SSM, you quoted approvingly an anti-SSM activist who complained that children raised by same-sex parents tend not to see anything wrong with the way they were raised. As was noted at the time, this does have a certain Brechtian tone to it, but let’s set that aside for a moment. I think it’s probably true that some children who feel they have been wronged stay silent, but I see no reason to conclude, as you seem to, that that is the case in anywhere near the majority of cases. I think you may want to consider the possibility that the majority of the people you are trying to save from unjust situations do not consider those situations unjust.
I’m asking what those rights are, or at least what you view them to be.
I don’t recall the quote or the reference to Brecht.
As far as the majority of people in those situations: can either of us say what the majority thinks? Either way, I thought justice was an independent concept from what the majority thinks.
The quote was by a woman who said it was frustrating that the children of same-sex couples didn’t agree with her assertion that they had been wronged. Here is the poem by Bertholt Brecht to which I alluded.
I don’t think justice is dependent upon the opinion of the majority. I also don’t think it is dependent upon the opinion of minorities. My whole point is that your quotation of people who share your view on the matter doesn’t add anything to the substantive debate. It’s emotional fluff. Note: I am not calling those people’s feelings, or your own, fluff. I’m just saying that they are irrelevant to the question of whether or not something is unjust.
I’m not sure what everyone in that situation sees either. But as I mentioned to Sal, I am operating under the general idea that justice is an independent idea, and not dependent on what the majority thinks. Maybe I’m wrong about that–perhaps justice does depend on what the majority thinks. Either it does, or it doesn’t, right? If it does but only sometimes, that doesn’t really make sense. And wouldn’t that be contrary to our republican (lowercase r) understanding of how our government is supposed to function?
If the stories of the children in those situations are emotional fluff and don’t add anything substantive to the debate, do you agree that the stories of emotional pain that infertile couples go through are also emotional fluff and don’t add anything substantive to the debate?
Here is the discussion I was referring to. http://ricochet.com/may-i-please-call-myself-a-libertarian/comment-page-9/#comments
Jennifer Thieme:
I do. I really think anecdotes about personal feelings have no place in this sort of debate.
Jennifer, as you’re the one implying — or at least posing the question — that I have a deficient view of children’s rights, I think the burden’s on you.
I was pleased that you mentioned children’s rights, so I wondered what you thought they were. Thinking about children’s rights is a good exercise for anybody.
You sound surprised that I care about children’s rights. Why?
Up next: Tom explains why he thinks it’s wrong to beat one’s wife.
I don’t normally hear libertarians acknowledge children’s rights.
OK, that’s a fair enough position to hold–you’ll equally discount the emotional aspect of both sides. The problem that I see is that TPR would not exist and would not be broadly accepted except for the emotional pain of infertile couples.
Why not? You can want something without feeling pain at its absence.
I don’t normally hear SoCons acknowledge copyright, but that doesn’t lead me to presume they reject it.
Honestly, either you’ve the most ill-informed and biased take on libertarians of anyone beside PracticalMary, or some concept of children’s rights that eludes everyone else in this conversation. Honestly, I don’t know what to say at this point.
In principle, I think this can be true of some things. But when it comes to having a family, I don’t think it applies. Every story I’ve heard of infertile couples who want kids indicates that it’s an emotionally painful experience.
I’m not denying that it is. My point is that their experiencing pain isn’t a necessary justification for allowing TPR.
This is beyond ridiculous. Libertarians talk about rights for everyone we don’t distinguish based on age.
Right. The difference with children is they don’t have the capacity to invoke their rights in a complete manor and so they have adults who we acknowledge have parental rights to make certain decisions for the child. This is most often the biological parents because biological parents are the Schelling point – a solution that people will tend to use in the absence of communication, because it seems natural, special or relevant to them.
This is the reason the “biological connection” is respected for the initial allocation of parental rights, because it is practically everyone’s schelling point. Beyond which they can transfer their ability to invoke the rights of the child to other adults.
I appreciate your position here.
Right – I was more referring to the blanket statement made by Jennifer. I recognize that children lack the ability to exercise their rights most of the time.
What SoCons don’t seem to understand is that focusing on individual rights leads to some very interesting outcomes for libertarians. For example a large number of libertarians are Pro-Life (see we DO think of the children!) Why? Because we believe that those babies have individual rights that must be respected – and in a conflict of rights the most fundamental right wins out.
It doesn’t lead me to presume they reject it either, and that’s not why I said what I did. I don’t need to presume; I have my experiences here to guide me.
When I say, “I don’t normally hear libertarians acknowledge children’s rights,” I stand by that statement based on the interactions I’ve had here at Ricochet, because it’s a statement about me and my impressions. It’s an observation based on my interactions with libertarians at this site. Do you remember the exchange between Fred and I where he mocked my “think of the children” arguments? I don’t recall any of the libertarians chastising him for that post. I also remember posting about the fault line between socons and libertarians (which primarily has to do with children, in my mind) and receiving a tremendous amount of pushback from the libertarians on it. (I searched for both those posts to link them here, but neither have migrated yet). So yea, I have this idea that the libertarians here think that children’s rights can be privatized to a large extent, depending on what the adults in their lives want to do.
When I asked you what you thought children’s rights were, your hunch about my underlying motives was correct. I’m sorry if that misrepresents you personally. I don’t mean it to and it seems that your views are sometimes more in line with the socon view than the other libertarians here, on some issues. But the libertarians here have often treated children’s rights as if they were strictly a private matter–at least that is my impression. But rights, by definition, are a public matter. And people who stand up for children’s rights here are treated with quite a bit of scorn.
Jennifer- At the risk of getting dragged into a long discussion about the exact nature of children’s (or anyone’s for that matter) rights, I’d like to suggest an alternative explanation for the libertarian response to Fred’s “think of the children” quip and your post about the difference between socons and libertarians. Rather than concluding libertarians do not believe in children’s rights, I think it far more accurate to say that libertarians profoundly disagree with you as to what exactly those rights are. You seem to have a tendency to assume that your definition of something is the only one possible and consequently express surprise when you encounter disagreement about the exact nature of something which is agreed by all sides to exist (the nature of the biological default rule being a recent example).
So I ask again: what are they?
Yes, I assume my definition is correct, especially when I ask questions that don’t get answered. For example, earlier on this thread I asked you and Mike (I think, or maybe it was Frank, or both) to explain why you thought the biological principle was a good default. Maybe I missed it, but I don’t think I got an answer from any of you .
Just because this is what you believe does not make it so. You seem to have a very different conception of rights from that of the Constitution and our Founders. Carve outs for specific classes of individuals are anathema to the entire concept of negative rights. The reason you got no push back from libertarians is not because we don’t care about children, but rather because your entire outlook on rights and law can be used to justify the most heinous intrusions on individual liberty imaginable. All the in the name of the children.
The rights of children are no different than the rights of any other individual. What is different is the extent to which they are capable of exercising them and the duties of the adults responsible for those children in protecting the rights they do have.
Jennifer- I haven’t provided a comprehensive explanation of my views on human rights because to do so would require volumes of writing. I have explained on other threads my view of the right to be raised by one’a biological parents and I think our opinions on this matter are irreconcilable. I’ve no desire to rehash this debate on every thread where you raise the question. As to the biological default. I heartily endorse Mike H’s explanation
I’m not criticizing you for thinking your own views correct. That is entirely natural. I’m suggesting that you might profit from considering how the views of others may differ from your own in ways more subtle than the all or nothing dichotomy you seem to frequently assume.
From the UN convention on the Rights of the Child
http://www.childrensradiofoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/childfriendlycrc.pdf
Children have the right to a legally registered name and nationality. Children also have the right to know their parents and, as far as possible, to be cared for by them.
Governments should respect a child’s right to a name, a nationality and family ties.
Children should not be separated from their parents unless it is for their own good….Children whose parents have separated have the right to stay in contact with both parents, unless this might harm the child.
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Children have the right to say what they think should happen when adults are making decisions that affect them and to have their opinions taken into account.
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Both parents share responsibility for bringing up their children and should always consider what is best for each child…
Governments should ensure that children are properly cared for and protect them from violence, abuse and neglect by their parents, or anyone else who looks after them.
Children who cannot be looked after by their own family must be looked after properly by people who respect their religion, culture and language.
When children are adopted the first concern must be what is best for them…