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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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How about we combat these expectations without denigrating the responsible use of these technologies?
Disregarding and holding it as the only acceptable method of family formation are two very different propositions. I don’t see many arguments in this thread stating we should disregard biology – just that it might not be the most important element in the formation of good stable families.
Any two idiots can produce a child, it takes a special mindset and moral character to be parents.
This is Ricochet 2.0, right? Does that mean I can like this twice?
No, but it does mean you can use a nested reply which can itself receive likes :-)
Well, to really answer this appropriately we have to get metaphysical. Lots of things in life may reasonably be seen as “gifts” but even so, most of our activities and transactions can reasonably be seen as subsidiary products of our rational agency insofar as we (rational persons) are greater than they (the products of what we have done).
Because babies are literally our ontological equals, we need special categories to deal with them. Our attitude (comportment) towards what we beget needs to be fundamentally different from our attitude towards what we make or buy. We may not exercise complete rational mastery over the latter, but yes, it’s reasonable to set rational mastery as a kind of goal. With our children the goal is fundamentally different.
These are the kinds of subtleties that get edited out when a practice that breaks with fundamental natural principles “goes viral”. You can hate that that tends to happen, but it does. A million “use responsibly” labels just can’t substitute for a bedrock natural principle like “human beings shouldn’t be purchased.”
Here’s another analogy that might clarify the issue.
An army private is subordinate to his general. He must follow orders regardless of how he may feel (immoral orders maybe not). If he fails to follow orders, i.e., he runs off on his own to fight the enemy, he can be disciplined or even shot.
The general has a duty to the private. His plans must also include things that reduce the casualties to his army. If he totally disregards this duty he can be prosecuted. The general, it should be hoped, also has a moral duty which he understands as in the nature of the private: a duty to keep persons alive.
But soon there will be robot soldiers. These machines will have no duty to the general in the sense of the private, but will be controlled through an impersonal set of programs.
The general has no duty to the robots. He needn’t concern himself with their safety. They can be blown to bits in droves. That does not matter.
The danger in commodification of children is that, over time, the sense of duty in parents will change. Children become things, much like the robots.
Would you agree that joblessness and poverty tend to increase the rate of despair and even destructive behavior (such as drug habits, domestic violence, stealing, and even suicide)? That, while a truly courageous and virtuous soul should be able to resist these temptations, even with his dying breath, in reality many people won’t?
Now, how do you feel about economic policies that create barriers to employment, especially among the poorest of the poor? (Such policies include licensing laws, many health and safety laws, mandated employer contributions, and minimum wages.)
Such economic policies do not cause drug abuse, domestic violence, thievery, and suicide. They do not force these vices on anyone, for true moral courage resists vices no matter what.
What such economic policies do do is to disrupt the free flow of employment information by making it illegal to communicate and act on much of the information that is out there. (Say I’m a widow who can’t afford to have my house painted at the minimum wage. There is a teenager down the street who would be happy to paint my house for less than minimum wage. But we are now forbidden by law from seeking each other out.)
I’ve no problem with biology being the default principle for determining parenthood. Indeed, it seems to be the best default. The thing about defaults, though, is that they are not meant to normative in the way you’ve been applying the term to argue the primacy of the biological bond. Deviation from a default is not evidence of a sub-optimal situation.
Default may have been your second choice, but it has a very different meaning in this context than does primary.
I’d rather be a child with no idea about my biological heritage and/or created with technological assistance than not to experience life. ART kids are by and large going to be very happy they exist, even if some may be bummed they don’t have biological parents, given the alternative of no opportunity of being bummed about anything at all. The objection to biological parents using a surrogate because this could somehow be important to the kid’s sense of identity boggles the mind.
Knowing I’m my parents kid and my kids are biologically mine is a nice perk, but it’s not important in the grand scheme of life.
It’s good when people make good decisions with their available options. Other people will make bad decisions and there will be consequences for themselves and other, as there has been for time immemorial. You can’t stop the bad outcomes by dictate without creating other bad outcomes or preventing people from the option of making good choices. When something is demonstrably good in the vast majority of cases, it is wrong to even conceive of regulation. (no pun intended)
Following up on comment 104, eventually, as technology advances, the state will assume a greater and greater power over children. Once made commodities, society will seek to maximize the practical value of children. The state will adopt laws which will dictate when parents may have children, how those children will be designed, and what the purpose of the child is. Sooner or later, the state will simply take over, and children will be produced to satisfy some need identified by the state. Once this happens, the concept of personhood will be destroyed. For example, a child designed to have superior intellect in mathematics will be directed toward some “career” that will further a perceived need, perhaps engineering or physics. At that point the child loses his/her freedom. Once freedom is lost the child will have no moral (an ultimately legal) status. He will then be seen as no more than a robot programmed to do as the state requires. At some point children will lose even an understanding of what it means to be a person with rights and responsibilities. He will have duties only, which will be dictated by the state. This is the Brave New World.
If “default” doesn’t imply normativity, I can’t see that it means anything, except perhaps “lots of people seem to prefer things that way for whatever reason”.
Jennifer- This is simply not the way most adoptions work. In the United States, the biological parents of adoptive children are usually not dead or unfit (at least if you apply the standards of parental fitness used in parental rights proceedings. My own view, based on my girlfriend’s work as a prosecutor of sex crimes and child abuse is that far too many biological parents are allowed to keep their children. If anything, I think we give excessive weight to the biological bond, but that’s another issue). They are usually just disinclined to raise a child for one reason or another such as being young or poor etc.
Our current adoption system doesn’t require a mother to be unfit to give her baby up for adoption. It is a matter of her preference.
Midge, I don’t really know why you’re focused particularly on the information part. What “information” is restricted when we ban commercial surrogacy contracts? Maybe you can come up with something, but primarily it’s actions that are restricted and/or not facilitated by the state.
And yes, some of the secondary effects of that can be regrettable, but I still believe that the preservation of the relevant fundamental natural principles in law and culture is overwhelmingly the more significant moral concern.
That’s what it means. The default settings on your car stereo are not meant to imply other settings are inferior. In law, the default rules in contracts, inheritance etc. are there for the sake of convenience and may be freely changed according to the parties’ preferences.
That’s actually a really good way to structure society. People try to argue that property rights don’t exist, but then try to take away their stuff and watch them squirm. Lots of people have a very strong sense of property, so it is a good default to build society around. This is similar to how people feel about their children.
Perhaps the “information” Midge has in mind is “I would be willing to carry your baby for a fee” and “I would be willing to pay you for that service.”
I guess we would be less likely to communicate that information if the contract were banned, but only because it wouldn’t be relevant. The communicative element is kind of secondary.
OK. But this really doesn’t give us much reason to protect or promote that bond. I don’t feel reassured that we won’t be moving towards a world in which the state takes my kids to rectify the inherent injustice of my being able to have several and a gay couple none. It’s not my preference, but it might be theirs, and why should my radio preferences trump someone else’s?
I agree that biology is the best default, but I don’t think it’s quite accurate to say that I’ve argued that deviation from the default is evidence of a sub-optimal situation.
Given the fact that the bio parents are indisposed, the adoptive situation is optimal. Here’s an analogy. Let’s say your family home burned down. It’s a home that your great-grandfather built, and it had a lot of meaning for you. But the fire destroyed it completely. That’s an unfortunate circumstance. But the rebuilt home is not an unfortunate circumstance–it’s a blessing. It’s the same with adoption. It’s unfortunate if the bio parents are indisposed. It’s not unfortunate for the kids to be adopted into new homes–it’s a blessing.
I don’t see default and primary being very different in this context. In this context, primary simply means first or standard.
But regardless, I conceded to use default. I’m happy with that usage, as it conveys my meaning well enough and it provides a place for us to agree.
Already I might disagree. As I noted in my March 8 Happiness post (which has since been eaten by Rico 2.0, so I can’t link to it), Carlo Gesualdo was a disgusting man, yet the music he wrote was transcendent. What he made transcended who he was. The same could be said for Richard Wagner, and indeed many other artists.
No, rational mastery is not a reasonable goal to set. As both the “scarily-pro-free-market” economists Ronald Coase and David Friedman have noted, people are not perfectly rational creatures and never will be. I wish I could cite their exact quotes on this, but alas, Rico 2.0 has eaten them (I published them June 18 2012 in a post entitled “Economists and the Crazy Things People Do To Themselves”, which did not survive the transition to 2.0, despite its promotion to the Main Feed).
An attitude that seeks to make the most of the opportunities you are given is quite different from believing that rational mastery is either desirable or attainable.
Adoption is a disaster because the information transfer is almost nonexistent. Allowing money to change hands would allow for vastly quicker, easier, and largely better outcomes for all involved. Similar to the other controversial market of organs.
“Well, tons of people would be vastly better off, but I don’t trust others to make the right decisions for themselves and their friends and family might be emotionally hurt, and money makes things feel “icky” so I’m going to use the law to forbid people from doing things that offend my morality and might make it harder to teach my kids what I believe is right and wrong.”
Rational mastery is a reasonable goal in the sense that it’s good to have as much of it as we can over the things we make and do. In my vegetable patch, I am the metaphysical giant, and nobody calls me totalitarian for trying to bend everything to my will. My success is admittedly never perfect, but it’s reasonable to try to get as much rational mastery as I can.
It’s not reasonable for me to get as much rational mastery as I can over my kids. They are my equals first and foremost, my projects only in a kind of secondary or analogous way. Trying to bend them totally to my will (as I do with my vegetables) would be tyrannical and unjust to them.
“They are usually just disinclined to raise a child for one reason or another such as being young or poor etc.”
I don’t agree with this characterization. Reference
“Our current adoption system doesn’t require a mother to be unfit to give her baby up for adoption. It is a matter of her preference.”
Sal, I never argued that it did.
As far as artists go, that is a curious case indeed, but it’s like an exception that proves the rule. Socrates said that artists were “possessed by the gods” and there’s something in that I think. Sometimes artists channel ideas that are too big even for them. It’s a mysterious thing, but not the sort of principle we should permit to swamp our fundamental understanding of justice and the distinction between artifacts and persons.
Do you really think that’s even plausible?
I’m glad to read through the comments and see that a few people (thanks, Midge) have advocated the unusual and unpopular opinion that money should be allowed to change hands in the setting of adoption. Kevin Williamson wrote a great article about this idea a few years ago, and NR recently re-published it. The point he makes is that if you allow for money to change hands in the setting of adoption, you aren’t really selling children; the transaction is not analogous to slavery because the end position of an adopted child is not the position of a slave. Instead, parental rights would be bought and sold.
I admit that as an adoptive parent, the idea of this appalled me when I first ran into it. However, the more I have mulled it over through the years, the more I see its logic. After all, right now you can pay a college girl $30K to let you harvest her eggs, or more to carry a child for you. Why should she not be similarly compensated for the time, toll on her body, and personal loss of relationship if she gives up her child for adoption?
It doesn’t matter if she finds it plausible. Inventing and then irrationally fearing an Orwellian fantasy does not give you carte blanche for your prefered social engineering.
It won’t happen tomorrow, Sal, but cultures can bend themselves to some pretty horrific practices given enough time. The mere fact that the idea shocks you should not be seen as adequate protection. Same-sex marriage would have shocked our great-grandparents, but, well, times change.
It’s obvious that liberals now see free contraceptives as an entitlement of justice for women. That can only be rooted in some sense that it is “cosmically unjust” for them to have been disproportionately burdened in childbearing. It doesn’t seem like a wild stretch to suggest that homosexuals are unfairly burdened when they have to pay surrogates tens of thousands of dollars to carry babies for them; why should they be punished for same-sex attraction in that way?
Given that many people already have a strong distaste for overly-fertile religious families, it doesn’t seem that crazy to me to worry that this solution (eminent domain for babies!) might appeal to some people a few decades up the road, once we get more comfortable with the practice of transferring babies away from their biological and/or gestational parents.
AMEN!