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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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He’s expressing an ambiguous view of what happened – which is something we should all respect as valid for him rather than try and repackage it to fit a one dimensional talking point, positive or negative.
If we really want to listen to people (and we should) we can’t just do it when they say what we want to hear. We need to listen when they tell us stuff we don’t agree with too.
This is precisely my take as well.
Jamie, that can’t be true. For example, much of this thread has been arguing about parental rights, which are something children don’t have and cannot obtain. If it was true that children have the same rights as any other individual, then the libertarians here might be arguing for a corresponding right for children to have parents. I’ve argued that point elsewhere here on Rico (specifically as children having rights to be with their own bio parents whenever possible) and the libertarians rejected that argument. They might have modified it to omit the bio parent part and have it as a broad right to parents, but I don’t recall them doing that. What I recall is that libertarians believe children don’t have any rights in that regard.
So right there, we see a difference in rights between adults and children, and not simply in a way that rights are exercised.
It doesn’t sound very ambiguous to me, but I agree that if we want to listen to people, we need to listen everything they say.
I think we should have started by looking at the concept of parental rights. It seems to me that they way they’ve been argued on this thread implies a right for adults to possess children.
No, no adult has a right to children. The problem is “parental rights” sounds like “the right to be a parent.” It’s not an inherent right, but it is a property right that can be gained under certain circumstances since someone must own the ability to make choices for the non-adult. Jennifer, you asked for a clear libertarian justification for the biological default, and I gave you one that received endorsement from the other libertarians in this conversation, and since then you’ve ignored it. Why? You seemed very interested in hearing a justification; my guess is because you didn’t think there would be one. Did I change your mind?
I wasn’t sure if there would be a justification. I admit to not paying close attention to every comment. The thread is getting long, I spent time away from it from Friday afternoon until Monday morning, and at this point I am the only socon whereas there appears to be at least 5-6 libertarians responding to me. So yes, I did glance at your response, and I didn’t register it as addressing my question. If others endorsed it at that time, I missed that as well. I see now that Tom and Sal endorsed it. If others endorsed it then I didn’t register their endorsements. There’s a bit of “information overload” at this point from my perspective, but I’m glad you tapped me again for a response–I think that’s the best way to handle an overlooked comment.
I think the reasoning you gave fits generally with what I have observed about libertarians here.
Fair enough, Jennifer. It’s brave of you to go extra innings with us. Hope you don’t feel ganged up on.
I’d like to second this. Jennifer, I do give you credit for the fact that you’ve the courage of your convictions, disagree as I might with many of them.
Thanks, guys.
It’s not clear to me what the child’s fate would have been if he hadn’t been purchased by the man wanting to raise a child. I need to know that – or at the very least know what the prospective buy believes the alternate fate would be – before I can make a moral judgment about the buyer’s decision. So, that’s something that I’d say needs to be improved about the hypothetical you pose.
I think that there’s a clear morally significant distinction. You’re not purchasing a human being / human organism. Surrogacy is a service. You’re paying for someone to gestate your prenate for you. Morally, this is much more like a very extreme case of babysitting than a case of ‘baby buying.’