Abstract
In What Money Can’t Buy and Justice – What’s the Right Thing to Do Michael Sandel argued that nowadays we face the loss of our collective moral compass caused by the increasing role of markets in our lives. In his view, when market and moral values compete, some aspects of everyday life become corrupted. One of the author’s examples is the case of surrogacy, presented as a service which corrupts parenthood. In this article we follow Sandel’s argument and argue, step by step, that its logic cannot be fully applied to surrogacy and, there where it can, it is utterly wrong. That is because in fact Sandel’s argumentation is not strictly economic but personalistic, as we demonstrate in the article. Our conclusion is that Sandel’s personalistic approach to surrogacy cannot be generalized over all cases and cultures, and even where it is used, it is offending and discriminating against both women who want to be surrogates and the intended parents.
Highlights
Our argument is that Michael Sandel’s market argumentation against surrogacy is personalistic and cannot be rationally defended
We situate our work within analytical tradition – this means that we do not focus too much on hermeneutics, but we take first, a comparative approach, we present additional empirical cases of surrogacy and we demonstrate why these cases cannot be even compared with the previous ones which means by itself that they do not meet the criterion of homogeneity
The legal issues connected with surrogacy comprise the enforceability of surrogacy agreements; the legality of secondary issues involved in the surrogacy process, e.g. in vitro fertilization (IVF); the legal mechanisms of child’s transition from a future or intended parent to a legal parent – namely: establishing parenthood rights; and, sometimes, e.g. in the cases of reproductive tourism, mechanisms of establishing a child’s citizenship
Summary
Our argument is that Michael Sandel’s market argumentation against surrogacy is personalistic and cannot be rationally defended. We situate our work within analytical tradition – this means that we do not focus too much on hermeneutics, but we take first, a comparative approach, we present additional empirical cases of surrogacy and we demonstrate why these cases cannot be even compared with the previous ones which means by itself that they do not meet the criterion of homogeneity The latter proves that Sandel’s argumentation belongs to a particular type of rationality and cannot be universalized. Surrogacy is a service provided by women who are ready to become pregnant and give birth to a child which right after is given to the ordering people who become the child’s parents It usually takes a form of mutual economic agreement between a surrogate and the future parents. Second is when an embryo is created via in vitro fertilization and it is implanted in a surrogate
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