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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   8736 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 13, 2026

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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.

"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.

But one problem is that emotionally stable adults are actually quite rare in my experience.

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:

  • Emotionally stable people are unlikely to do them
  • The acts themselves are emotionally destabilizing.

"It's morally wrong to sell people" doesn't sound so difficult.

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.

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?

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".

"Selling people" is understood to be bad for reasons like the people being sold don't have a say in the matter

Like the children...

they have less rights than others

like the children...

there is typically violence or coercion involved.

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.

The bad things that are inherent or understood to be inherent in slavery / trafficking don't really apply to surrogacy.

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.

That argument applies to surrogacy 1:1.

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.

Property is something you can own.

Parents (including adoptive parents, or legal guardians) do not own their children.

It is possible to own a person extralegally (such as through enslavement by human trafficking), but this is not an inherent part of surrogacy.

Thus I figure surrogacy does not make children into property. Not any more than being able to waive parental rights does.

Property is something you can own.

Parents (including adoptive parents, or legal guardians) do not own their children.

What's your definition of "own"? If it's something like "I can do whatever I want with it", than a lot of things we typically think of as property don't actually clear that criterion. I'm mostly focusing the title being freely transferable. The reason adoptive parents, in theory, don't own the children, is because adoption-in-theory happens when the child loses it's parents, or they become unable to fulfill their duties, in tragic circumstances, and they were picked to assume the duties of the parents. There's (in theory) no open market for legal guardianship. This is often not the case with adoption-in-practice, which isn't necessarily any better than surrogacy.

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