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Is the slippery slope really a fallacy?
A story from Canada today that, by its very nature, maximizes heat. I will try to keep my own emotions about this story in check. Sitting at the intersection of gay rights, abortion rights, surrogacy rights, and ultimately the violence upon which all government force is founded, I bring you: Couple sues surrogate who refused to abort their baby over a minor birth defect
https://nypost.com/2026/07/14/world-news/couple-sues-surrogate-who-refused-to-abort-their-baby-over-a-minor-birth-defect/
Long story short, the baby had a minor heart defect
(the article doesn't specify what)and a cleft palate, and the adoptive men wish their now two year old child had been murdered and are suing the birth mother for failing to do so (there are also claims that she failed to keep them informed in a timely manner about these issues). Last I'll say of my own emotions on this is that this strikes me as outright demonic behavior and if I say anything more about my feelings I'm going to drift into fedposting so I'll stop here.The main point I can take away from this is that all of the Christian right that warned about various slippery slopes have been validated over, and over, and over again. The slippery slope is technically a fallacy, yes. But Christians repeatedly pointed out "There is no limiting principle here, and the arguments you nake to support degenerate behavior X are just as applicable to degenerate behaviors Y and Z and there is nothing except public sentiment (and not even that if a judge somewhere says otherwise) preventing the awful things we're talking about from becoming reality."
For those who lived through the culture wars over abortion, gay rights, and similar issues, have your feelings on the matter changed in anyway whatsoever over the last decade or two, and in which direction? And why, if you're able to articulate. For me at least, to quote the meme an old friend shared in our edgy groupchat the other day, "Upon further consideration I have decided to become more extreme in my religious beliefs".
I don't have anything to add specifically on the slippery slope question. Surrogacy arrangements are one of those things where yes, if you go into it with consenting, emotionally stable adults who all clearly agree on the terms, then it's hard to articulate a reason against it. But one problem is that emotionally stable adults are actually quite rare in my experience. I think some people overestimate their emotional stability and/or aren't truly prepared for the emotions that will come up throughout the process. I guess my point is, if you find a woman willing to carry an unrelated baby for you, she's either the most altruistic, selfless person on the planet, or something else is going on.
The other problem is the terms of the contract. Human beings are messy, biologically, and so are their relationships. I feel an instinctive revulsion at the idea of contracts that interfere in matters of marriage, fertility, sex, etc. And yet contracts are the instrument by which two parties agree on terms, they ensure terms are equitable, and they give the party remedies for violation of the contract. On a broader level, US law doesn't allow you to sell your kidney or other organs but somehow surrogacy doesn't have the same restrictions even though it's just as huge an issue of bodily and medical autonomy. In fact surrogacy should have even tighter restrictions because a new life is involved. But as I noted, real life is messy, and it's hard and uncomfortable to over-regulate delicate issues. So contracts don't cover key points or aren't written for every conceivable scenario, and people will get emotional and irrational about the outcomes if things haven't gone according to plan. I'm really surprised more cases like this don't make headlines.
"It's morally wrong to sell people" doesn't sound so difficult. There are also some more complex arguments that boil down to "a child has a right to a mother and a father" that require some elaboration to cover the special cases, but they're not that hard to follow either.
I don't think that's the issue. There's lots that are emotionally stable, the actual problem is the same that's people run into when discussing polyamory or prostitution:
Is it morally wrong for MLB teams to sell and/or trade players too each other? Is it morally wrong for a temp agency to sell their workers to a factory?
Calling surrogacy "selling people" is technically correct, but obtuse. "Selling people" is understood to be bad for reasons like the people being sold don't have a say in the matter, they have less rights than others, there is typically violence or coercion involved. Its evocative of slavery or sex trafficking. The bad things that are inherent or understood to be inherent in slavery / trafficking don't really apply to surrogacy. Yeah there are surrogacy horror stories like in OP, but the modal surrogacy case by far doesn't look like OP and there is not reason it should.
I don't think that's remotely comparable. You are talking about an employment contract, the fact that you think this can be placed in the same category as motherhood is already morally repugnant to me. But even if you think consent is the only valid moral factor, these contracts were entered into voluntarily, and the player / worker can refuse to be "sold".
Like the children...
like the children...
the only reason it doesn't is that the child is too weak to put up any kind of violent resistance. Also the mothers' material situation is often taken advantage of, which may be on the softer side of coercion, but it still plausibly fits in the same category.
They absolutely do. Slavery is not considered abhorrent because the masters always and everywhere mistreat their slaves, in fact "but we always treat aware slaves with kindness" was a staple pro-slavery argument back in the day, and it was rejected because treating people as ownable and sellable was considered immoral. That argument applies to surrogacy 1:1.
I know its not remotely comparable, that's why I said lumping them all together as "selling people" was obtuse. Selling slaves and surrogacy for money and MLB trades can all be described as "selling people", that those things are not (morally) comparable is my point. Because these "selling people" scenarios have wildly different moral valences "It's morally wrong to sell people" obviously has a little bit of nuance to it.
First thing is that's not even true, a MLB player can be sold against his will to another team. It happens all the time, and it not possible for him to refuse.
Second is that in both the particular surrogacy in question and the practice at large are also contracts entered into voluntarily. If you are going to argue that the baby gets a say - no, it doesn't. Does a baby get a say on if it is adopted? No. Has any baby ever had a say as to if or when or how they are born? No. Its never been the case, so why is it here?
Ok this one by me was maybe not precise, but I have a feeling you get the gist of what I am saying. I am referring to something like Kunta Kinte being shipped off to the deep south against his will, people generally think that is mean and bad. Given that no newborn child at any point in history has ever had a say in any matter I hoped that you realized that I was referring to something like Kunta instead of something unremarkable and due to the inherent nature of newborns.
I am going to assume you weren't talking about the fact that children and adults have different rights because that's not remarkable or the point of contention here.
What right does a non surrogate child have that a surrogate child does not? The right to a mother? Baby has a mother. How could it be born if it didn't have a mother? That it is adopted by two gay men, one being the father, does not strike the mother from existence.
Really? I don't believe you. You couldn't possibly know this, its not falsifiable, did a baby tell you this? No, you just made it up.
The surrogate was not any given money for the kid. Per the article she was not even given money for the costs she incurred.
The parents don't own the kid beyond the extent every parent or guardian "owns" their kid. One of them is the actual father! Its his kid!
If that argument applies to surrogacy 1:1 then why doesn't it here?
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Only if the mother is the only "owner" no? If the father donated sperm then it's not selling the baby from one owner to a new one, the father is already the (part) "owner". Where it's a donated egg and sperm even more so as the surrogate is not the owner at all. It's essentially just renting space in the womb.
So it's definitely not 1:1 as an argument.
You too have it backwards. Slavery wasn't declared wrong because we decided that somewhere, along the way, ownership was misattributed, otherwise you'd still be allowed to sell yourself into slavery. It was decided that ownership of people is invalid in it's entirety, you can't do it at all.
If you could own another person, and if a mother owned her child, then she could sell, and there would be no issue with surrogacy to begin with.
The father has every right to the custody of the child as well, he does not have a right to buy out the mother from her part. He especially does not have a right to commission the creation and birth of a child for the specific purpose of buying out the mother's custody right.
The process of birth creates a bond between the mother and child, and the idea you can ignore that and act like it's possible to "rent space in the womb" is morally insane.
It is not.
What is asserted without argument may be dismissed without argument.
Under which moral framework? Why? You're just throwing boo words out without actually justifying your position.
You might be right! But you can't just claim your opponents are insane and expect people to nod.
And that is why I was using quotes for owner. The mother is not the actual owner, but whether we call it ownership or not parents have huge ability to decide what should happen to their children up to and including having other people raise them and abdicating their parental rights entirely. Every day parents give their kids up for adoption. It is clear whatever bond there may be is not inviolable.
So a man can indeed have a child with a woman with the idea that he alone will raise him and vice versa. That follows from a chain of logic. Parents can give up custody. They can give up custody before birth. They can give up custody after birth. They can abandon their family entirely.
If I want a child and find a woman who is willing to let me have sex with her on the proviso that I will take and raise the child and she wants nothing to do with it, that can happen right now with no money changing hands. She can sign away her parental rights, leaving me in sole custody. She has the right to do so. I have the right to do so.
So is it just the money that makes it morally insane? Can you at least detail your belief system a little more here?
Ok man, have fun advocating for reducing penalties for rape to those for unpaid rent.
Sorry mate, I'm not playing with people who only do skepticism. Show me your moral framework, and I'll show you mine.
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Okay, but infants already have less rights than other people and don't have a say in much of anything, whether they are "sold" or not.
He's the one that tried telling me these criteria don't apply, I didn't rest my case on them. My case is that the child has a sacred bond with it's mother, that can only be broken in extreme circumstances, which "here's some heckin' dolarinoos" doesn't clear.
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Perhaps in the world before, when children were factual property of the head of the house. Today, as some lament, we do not own our children.
You have it backwards. If children were property of the parents, there could be no objection to surrogacy, because you can sell your property.
How do you define surrogacy as selling children if at no point does the child become the new parent's property?
What? My entire objection to surrogacy is that it does, in fact, make children into property. It's the only way surrogacy is even possible.
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