This is quite a dry, transactional approach. What does it mean for a women to bear a child? How important is it for a child to have a mother and a father, and ideally their real parents as their parents? Over the long term what is the most stable (and happy) form of family life? How do we best promote that as a society?
The stable and happy form of family life we want is one where the children are loved and the parents treat each other well and stay together. Which homosexual-parent households do just as well as heterosexual-parent ones. See e.g. (study linked within):
Just like how the pro-life movement is undermined by its supporters' lack of enthusiasm for any support for children *after* their birth, pro-family advocates who might otherwise win some people to their way of thinking end up focusing less on what can encourage parents to stay together, and more on their belief that gay people shouldn't be parents. Which makes people realize that it's not about being pro-family at all, but rather that's a thin veneer for hate. If you're actually pro-family, you want more kids born to smaller households who love them and can afford to take care of them and where the parents stay together. As the slogan of another movement has it: love is love. All other factors pale in comparison.
The idea that normalization of "gay marriage" has been motivated by some kind of empirical evidence is beyond farcical. Surely you aren't trying to make such a claim?
I'm a conservative - I think the burden of evidence for change lies with the person advocating for change. We have a set of normative social relationships established over [hundreds at least] years, that's the key piece of evidence. Rights based changes (not evidence based), followed by some random sociology study don't begin to constitute evidence to make the changes we've made.
I dunno, man. Orphanages are also part of our cultural heritage. As was the Victorian practice of shipping kids out to spend their teen years in a house that's not their parent's, to toughen them up or something. I think the benefits of "growing up in a household where the parents want them, love them and can afford to take care of them" are apparent enough that it probably doesn't need discussion, no? Like, that notion isn't "advocating for social change" the way that, say, advocating for "maybe police shouldn't view minorities as threats as a default setting" would be. A positive family environment IS the default for a majority of children, but tragically far from a universal experience. Trying to close that gap doesn't seem contrary to the current social order, if anything it would reinforce it.
Marriage is a pretty magical thing, it gives a structure for men and women to form a joint enterprise that marries their respective strengths and weaknesses, and ideally produces offspring who share genes with both their parents (which I'm sure is highly positively correlated with good parenting vs the alternative, abusive step dads etc). Thanks to modern American politics, we're now playing a game to say that marriage is just a thing where two people really like to have sex with each other, and then we want to dignify this new definition with children, thus surrogacy. We're kind of saying it doesn't matter if you don't have a father and a mother, those things weren't actually such a big deal. I'm hoping that we one day look back on this time as we now look back on Victorian orphanages and boarding schools.
Orphanges are a recent invention. Historically, children who were orphaned were raised by grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, etc. They stayed within the family.
There are plenty of stories about adoptees who had terrible family lives despite being wanted and provided for and others who had nice, loving families but always felt different and wished they were raised by their biological parent(s). Perhaps love just ain't enough.
I know this is late- but just according to the article, it’s an analysis of 34 studies taking place between 1989-2022 in several different countries with legalized SSM. Are you arguing that all 34 studies have been flawed in every country over a 33 year period? I’m trying to understand why this doesn’t pass your benchmark
I do think that we live in a world that "research finds" that everything is fine with gay people, regardless of whether or not that's true.
But if you believe we should infringe on liberty, you still need to provide actual evidence. More than vibes.
And if you want to prevent a class of people from reproducing, you'd better show that they make *particularly* awful parents.
If you're about to bite both bullets - to say that bad parents should be prevented from having children, and also that gay people make uniquely bad parents - that would at least be an argument. But if you're just vaguely asking "what is good?" then I don't see the relevance of your comments.
Gay couples can't have children or reproduce, by definition. I mean, I suppose they could reproduce despite their claimed sexual preferences, but if they then actually marry the person they reproduced with and raised their child together, one has to question whether they're really gay anymore at that point. In a typical "gay marriage," obviously the child can only be the child of one of the "parents," at best.
Are the Black Hebrew Israelites "pro-Jew" when they come along and proclaim themselves to be "the real Jews?" Would any actual pro-Jewish person go along with such nonsense, or would they condemn it as anti-semitism?
It's the same when cohabitating homosexuals come along and claim to be a "family." Accepting this claim undermines the entire concept of a "family," as it no longer has any meaningful qualifications. It would now mean just any combination of people who live in close proximity and claim to "love each other," totally disconnected from behavior, biology, or anything else tangible.
By this logic, we should encourage a re-flourishing of polygamy, as it is once again entirely compatible with our brave new definition of "family." Why can't one man and eight wives raise however many of their children? At least the kids of such an arrangement would actually be the children of the people raising them.
you seem to have a view of gay people raising children that regards it as comparable to the robots in the Matrix raising humans as a power source. I suggest you get out there and actually meet some real gay people, and see how they're raising children (i.e., as lovingly as any other parent, on average).
One proposed mechanism to explain why homosexuality evolved - in all highly social species, beyond even primates, and across all human societies - is that gay people are a social safety net to help the children of close relatives (called "kin selection"). There are also other evolutionary adaptations it is linked with, such as reduced male aggression and increased female fertility in kin.
TLDR: Gay people were genetically engineered to be good at raising children, in a manner of speaking. It takes a village to raise a child. Highly restrictive notions of what a family is or is not do not reflect observed reality within human societies.
If we look at "observed reality within human societies," obviously you will find that the modern notion of "gay marriage" was non-existent until about 5 seconds ago, and remains non-existent among the majority of the world's population. So I wouldn't lean on that phrase if I were you.
If the idea that people are now doing it means that it is good and acceptable because it is now "observed reality," this is a tautology. Slavery was also an observed reality of basically every human society until relatively recently. This doesn't mean slavery is morally desirable.
It might be nice to pretend that we could somehow decide this issue with "data," but unfortunately, we live in a situation where so-called "data" regarding anything vaguely related to homosexuality is beyond untrustworthy. And if we're being honest, this is not a "data" issue. Just as the gay rights advocates of both decades past and the present day form their view based on moral priors first, then maybe search out data later, I also choose to base my viewpoint on moral axioms rather than attempting to sort through statistical analyses. You almost certainly do as well, if you were being honest about it. This is an issue of first principles, not of numbers on spreadsheets.
And yes, the notion of what a family is, is highly restrictive. Definitions of words are highly restrictive, by definition. Otherwise they aren't definitions and the words don't mean anything. Just as red is not green and men are not women, two homosexual people cohabitating with someone else's child is not a "family."
Utilitarianism seems to be the most selfish, anti-human theory. Surrogacy is human trafficking. Period. It denies the humanity of mother, child, and father. Woof.
Surrogacy isn't just about the baby. The creation of life is an integrated experience of both mother and child. Renting a womb and then receiving a baby you've bought is commercialism to its core, transactional and lacking in humanity for all involved. Lacking humanity =/= non human.
If that’s the way you feel, more power to you; no one is forcing you to use a surrogate. The question is whether the force of government power should prevent others from following their own moral frameworks in order to be forced to follow yours.
Should the force of government be used to prevent any of the following:
--Pedophilia and/or viewing of child pornography
--Necrophilia
--Incest
--Bestiality
--Polygamy
I don't see how any of these can be reasonably outlawed by "the force of government" under your framework, except maaaybe pedophilia, but even then, it is certain that you could find examples of people who had sex as minors with adults and never regretted it or felt that it harmed them.
Pedo is obvious; children cannot give legally effective consent. Same with viewing of child pornography that involves actual child performers. It is difficult to justify banning this material if it involves youthful looking adults, computer-generated images, or animation.
Necrophilia is admittedly quite gross. I'd suggest it's usually a property rights violation -- someone owns the corpse, and usually they don't consent. I recognize that I want to ban renting out grandma's corpse for pleasure, even if grandma agreed in advance and the grandkids are OK with the cash, but it's hard to do within a libertarian framework.
Incest is very seldom adult brothers and sisters getting it on consensually; usually it's a species of sexual assault. There are certainly edge cases and cases where people don't feel victimized. But I think we have to have a number, rather than making judgment calls.
Bestiality is gross, and I don't necessarily have a problem with banning animal abuse, even if animals don't get full human rights.
Polygamy, even consensual, has serious social externalities. It's probably impossibly to maintain an advanced technological democratic society if polygamy becomes widespread. I'm fine with banning it.
"Pedo is obvious; children cannot give legally effective consent."
Why not? Again, I guarantee you that if you looked, you could find examples of people who had sex as minors and claim to be fine with the experience. I can even think of one off the top of my head; Milo Yiannopoulis, who was canceled for saying that his sexual experiences with an adult when he was 15 were a positive experience for him.
Your comment generally seems to recognize, though, that mere "consent" is unworkable as a means by which to regulate sexual degeneracy.
My position is not screwing moralities. It's looking at history and societies to see which, if any, have succeeded with contrasting moralities or underlying belief systems. And succeeded, meaning flourished. Can you identify a flourishing, successful society with multiple moral / belief systems operating at the same time?
My friend used a surrogate after she had to have a hysterectomy. I understood that it was the only "technology" available for her to have her own biological children. She and her husband didn't come to the decision lightly, and they did all they could to help and care for the surrogate. Maybe you would call this a sympathetic case?
I don't see commercialism to its core. On one side, sure. On the other side though, they are valuing the child in a different way. Commercialism to it's core is me getting a pickup truck with 430 horsepower.
And interestingly, your pickup truck idea is a machine. Renting wombs turns women's bodies into machines, so to speak. <3 We are in a machine. I highly rec Paul Kingnorth's substack on this!
I can see the emotional side of things, wanting one's own bio baby. But we don't get everything in life that we want. Our society has lost any sense of this. Thus, renting wombs. Regardless of the emotional plight of those involved, it's still renting a womb. It's a commercial exchange, plain and simple. Once the baby is born, the surrogate has no involvement left.
The "parents" are more arguable, but you can definitely argue that the humanity of the child is denied in how they are bartered away by their mother for money. I wonder what surrogacy advocates would say to a child born of surrogacy who grows up to resent that he or she was created in such a manner, feeling that they were born merely to satisfy the whims of others. This isn't a problem yet because surrogacy is still pretty much a brand new practice, but it seems likely that this may begin to surface in a few decades when all these surrogate babies grow up and finally acquire agency of their own. They may decide that they aren't very comfortable with the fact that their birth mothers bore them simply so they could be given away for money.
They might indeed feel that way, but of course they get to feel that way because they are alive. In many if not most cases, they wouldn't exist at all were it not for the procedure. I probably wouldn't care, but I'd rather have some slight angst and be alive rather than never having been born. It's also possibly they'll feel great about it -- special, having known their genetic parents were willing to spend $100,000 to have them.
Also, you use the term "mother" to refer to the person who does the gestation. A DNA test would show the mother is the person who supplied the egg.
"They might indeed feel that way, but of course they get to feel that way because they are alive. In many if not most cases, they wouldn't exist at all were it not for the procedure."
Is the idea here that we can do whatever we want with a life after it has been created, because the life "owes" its creators in some existential manner? Because we can imagine disproving counter-examples for this notion with extreme ease. For instance, imagine couples hiring surrogates to give birth to extra children of theirs for the express purpose of having compatible organs to harvest should they ever need a transplant.
"I probably wouldn't care, but I'd rather have some slight angst and be alive rather than never having been born. It's also possibly they'll feel great about it -- special, having known their genetic parents were willing to spend $100,000 to have them."
I agree it is almost certain some children of surrogates wouldn't be bothered by the details of their creation and birth. But if any of them were, you have to basically write off their concerns as illegitimate decades in advance, in order to support the practice. This seems to me an obvious denial of agency in the same way that abortion denies the child their right to live in service of an adult's convenience.
"Also, you use the term "mother" to refer to the person who does the gestation. A DNA test would show the mother is the person who supplied the egg."
That is one form of surrogacy, yes, but surrogacy also takes place in which the mother gestating the child is also its actual genetic mother; in the case of gay couples, you could even have a situation where the gestating mother and the genetic mother are different and *neither one* is even involved in the child's life after its initial conception and birth.
Regardless, it is not at all clear that the woman who actually carries a fetus to term somehow has no motherly connection to them (indeed, as another poster has noted in this comments section, it would be directly contrary to human biology to claim this).
What is the source of human dignity? As for choice, how much agency constitutes choice? Where do these people get the idea that voluntary sterilization is good for them?
After listening to oral arguments in a dozen abortion cases before SCOTUS, I was stunned to learn what those seeking to remove safeguards from the procedure consider choice. They want to be sure pregnant women have as as little info as possible. I was stunned.
I'm a bit unclear on what consent looks like in these arguments too .... what constitutes sufficient consent for permanent medical procedures?
Is it dignified to sell body parts or rent body parts? Prostitution is a dignified occupation and it's just the screeching moral scolds who oppose it.
The issue with your take and Hannania's is that everything under the sun is up for sale. Nothing is off limits. Nothing is special or unique. Endless substitution.
We set plenty of limits for what is for sale. Or at least, I think a number of limits we have today are good ones, even if we might want some of them tweaked. e.g.:
- Someone cannot consent to being killed (except in euthanasia situations), and in fact cannot consent to grievous bodily harm even if non-fatal. There is a social interest in preventing you from doing so even if someone would meet your asking price.
- Generally, you can't take public goods and use them to derive private profit while damaging them, e.g. dumping industrial waste into water sources.
- Kids whose parents could not afford to keep them would occasionally be put up for sale in days gone by. That no longer happens and there are social services to provide alternatives.
- Various other market failures provide classes of situation where something cannot be bought even if there is a mutually agreeable price, such as with anti-trust cases.
- Fraud statutes are a good thing, even if some libertarians disagree: you should always get what you bargained for, and someone misrepresenting what they're selling you should be held to account.
And lest I appear unsentimental, I think most people (even customer of sex workers) would agree that while being a customer can be fun and/or get the job done, there is really no substitute for having sex with someone you love and who loves you back. It's an entirely different class of experience that is simply not for sale, because it being freely mutually given is part of what makes it special. There's a manner in which it's analogous to renting vs owning your home, although sex partners are of course not property.
As to body parts, I will let Scott Alexander's recent article on donating his kidney (not even selling it!) stand in testament to the moral value of such things, and addressing various concerns someone might have.
Steve, people can consent to serious non-fatal bodily harm, or at least a high risk thereof. Football and MMA fighting both involve battery, absent consent. Both can cause permanent injury, or even death. That is rare, but nearly all retired NFL players have serious health issues. I saw a documentary about Jason Kelce, and he basically can’t walk without taking anti inflammatory medication. And he’s still playing!
they can consent to *the risk* thereof. For the same reason they can sign up to be fire jumpers: they understand the risks, accept them, and take the pay (or thrill) that goes with it. You can consent to being a ski patroller even if you might break a leg or get buried in an avalanche. But you can't consent to letting someone stab you for money or beat you up for money. That's not "risk that comes with the job", that's just encouragement of cruelty and sadism with no social benefit to it whatsoever. Even in BDSM situations, a dom can cause pain but can't cause permanent damage. A purist libertarian would argue that it should all be allowed, of course... but I bring it up as an example of how we have limits to what we allow people to consent to in our society. There are many others, as noted.
"- Someone cannot consent to being killed (except in euthanasia situations), and in fact cannot consent to grievous bodily harm even if non-fatal. There is a social interest in preventing you from doing so even if someone would meet your asking price."
What is the "social interest" to such a thing? This sounds exactly like the sort of reasoning typically used to justify the outlawing of prostitution. It's bad for society overall, even if a small minority of people are able to benefit from it.
You agree we need limits on what can be bought and sold, we just disagree about what those limits on surrogacy should be.
In your first example, what is the social interest?
On the sale of children, there are alternatives (social services). The same alternative exists for the childless, adoption. Why is that not enough? It's because the demand exceeds.
Utilitarianism is the most pro-human theory. It seeks to maximize human utility, in opposition to abstract and subjective ideals of "justice", "godliness", and "nature".
"Human utility" is of course an abstract and subjective term. If you ask one person what gives them the greatest happiness in life, they may say their devotion to God. Another might cite their sexual conquests, and another their ability to smoke weed and watch Netflix all day.
This is exactly the sort of article I signed up to read from RH originally. Clear thinking, incorporating both pragmatic and ethical lines of thought, without pre-existing partisan or groupthink bias. The more he writes stuff like this, and the less he writes about race (on which he has a screeching level of blind spot and groupthink imo), the more readers he'll gain among centrists and intellectuals. Which I gather is one of his goals.
I assume that's why he wrote an extensive letter here on Substack after getting roundly critiqued in the national conversation for his former pseudonymous publications, a letter about how he used to hold shitty views on race and gender when he was a younger, angrier man, and now he doesn't think that way anymore.
But hey, I'm sure RH will "come around eventually" too, huh?
I have no problem with IVF or surrogacy other than one small issue. I am a woman who has successfully birthed 2 children. I had no real attachment to either of my children during my pregnancies. They were abstract. As I gave birth to them, something released inside me. I don't know if it was a rush of hormones or adrenaline or something else. Immediately (this cannot be explained in terms to anyone who has not given birth), I felt this overwhelming love, proteciveness, and link with this new human. It was weird and I've never felt that way with any other life event. I don't necessarily think it will be bad for society to have children through surrogates, I just don't actually know if that specific kind of bond is possible without the actual act of giving birth.
Not exactly rocket science that the female body is designed to create an overriding protective bond with her child when giving birth. The evolutionary basis for this is obvious. An inconvenient fact of biology that today's moral relativists would prefer to ignore.
Brandy, I have experience with IVF practitioners. An easy starting point for you is to consider this - a fertility doctor lied to my face about the process. You can and ought to draw your own conclusions from that. Dig deeper if you must, but it ain’t pretty.
Surely they won't have less of a bond than a person who adopts a child from a different family. Yet I don't see anyone advocating to prevent adoptions. I think most people are using surrogates when they CAN'T have kids on their own.
Nor is the surrogate a slave; nobody will force or even strongly encourage them to agree to a surrogacy deal. It has to be very much worth their while, which is why the going rate is somewhere north of $100k for 10-11 months' work.
Nobody is being auctioned, nor forced to indefinite terms of labor. Indeed, in most cases the surrogate has a right to decide to keep the baby in lieu of payment. The analogy to slavery is equal parts wrong and disgusting.
Nope, you’re wrong. Children have diminished rights. They are subject to the whims and objectives of the parents. We accept this with children conceived by the parents, because we all believe that biology guides the parents to have, in total, THEIR children’s best interest in their hearts. With surrogacy (liberally seasoned with the techniques of in vitro fertilization - also an evil practice) you have a situation where some children (conceived embryos are treated as less than human, meaning placed in a freezer to most likely die of neglect) are treated as much less than human, and a few selected children get denied the right to grow up with their biological parents because one or several adults paid to remove the child from their parents. VERY much reminiscent of a slave marketplace.
You seem to be advocating against adoption, not surrogacy. In most cases a surrogate is carrying the baby that is genetically derived from the couple who hired the surrogate, so it will be "related to them", which seems to matter to you (though it wouldn't to me). I fail to see how this is an argument against surrogacy.
Also, this is moving the goalposts from your initial critique comparing the practice to slavery, which you did not address.
So, the surrogate, carrying a human they are not related to, what are they experiencing for nine months? Pregnancy? Yes. How did they get pregnant? IVF? I believe IVF is plainly immoral (I have direct experience with this industry - don’t get me started). A father copulated with the surrogate?(not his wife)? That’s also plainly immoral (at least it was until five minutes ago).
I addressed the slavery characterization - re-read carefully. Slave markets denied the humanity of the slave. Surrogacy markets deny the human of conceived human beings.
Their humanity is being honored in myriad ways, including:
(1) being conceived and born at all, which absent the surrogacy agreement they may not have been (plenty of surrogacy is done due to infertility, not just convenience, of the would-be parents).
(2) being born into a family that wants them and loves them, which views them as a blessing and not a burden - something which we all would want for ourselves and our children and others' children, I assume. Indeed, brought into a family that has gone to great expense to bring them into the world and into their family.
The children are not for sale to the highest bidder, they are being carried for the specific benefit of the child and the parents who want them. Nobody else, save the surrogate, will end up with them. I fail to see how that's in any way comparable to slavery, unless you regard every instance of childhood to be slavery because children are expected to do what their parents tell them (or make them do).
And all the IVF conceived humans surplus to the purchasers’ needs sit on ice for years to be, in most cases, thrown away in the medical trash. The Mongols were pretty brutal - but at least they saw that those they were killing were human beings. Today we just put up blinders and “poof” - it’s okay to do that evil thing.
Yes, for most of human history, the genetic mother was the one who bore the child for nine (or slightly fewer) months. With surrogacy, the genetic mother and mother with the womb are different humans.
And even the implanted embryo is denied the natural gestation in their natural mother - that’s something that the child deserves but the parents are denying them, because the parents “want” something, which they acquire at the expense of sacrificing a not yet conceived human’s right to be born by their actual mother. Parents should sacrifice their interests for children, not the other way around.
No, only the implanted child is treated “like” a human. The discarded, extra embryos created by IVF (look it up) are treated as non-human property despite them meeting the definition of “human” (distinct genetic code not the mother’s, metabolic indicators of life, not a different species from the mother, not a virus). This is why surrogacy is analogous to slavery. The dehumanization of actual humans. Read Horton Hears a Who - a child’s book can clearly indicate that this is true - humanity is not a function of size.
However, in the same way that a slave is denied agency, the child here is transacted for money with no choice in the matter. If they grow up questioning how they feel about their mother giving them away for money, too bad, so sad for them. That consideration is apparently irrelevant.
So you are opposed to adoption of any kind? What about fostering? Should we bring back orphanages or simply kill any kid who has lost their biological parents?
The ones that use their own name and actually have any influence in the real world are crazy feminists and socialists who oppose surrogacy in all cases. This is the best argument for LGBT I’ve ever seen.
I never got this trad con argument that these things are a special variety of taking money for unpleasant labor. No problem at all with men doing dirty, miserable, dangerous jobs for money. I totally get the "locked in mutually destructive arms races" argument about regulating individual behavior when a system doesn't allow you to opt out unilaterally when you can't count on others to do so also. But why do trad cons make a special exception for things with it allegedly just a coincidence these things are Jesusy? It's weird how trad con women can't see the self interest in their moral views which amount to rigging mate markets in ways that adjudicate their specific tradeoffs better. But they can easily see this in feminism. It's simply no coincidence that self interest metrics are the best predictors of moralizing around things like abortion and surrogacy.
In the US and Canada, gay surrogacy works well. All sides are protected, the surrogates' motivation is helping people, and the children have good outcomes:
I know several gay couples who saved up a lot of money and had a bunch of kids via surrogacy. They raise them at least as well as any straight couple.
I'll just say observing those gay couples, it's sort of that they lose a lot of the "bad" things associated with women as well as some bad things associated with straight men. For instance, HBD folks talk all the time about the differences in average aggression between white and black men. There's a similar effect going on where gay men are less aggressive. In fact, gay men are less delinquent than even straight women*. In a modern environment, male homosexuality may well lead to superior parenting, and various other things traditionalists pride. I won't discuss what the advantages over women as those feel culture warry. But it does seem like gay couples have a lot of advantages (even if we just limit the discussion to traditional family life) over straight couples.
Can you tell me what about the research they present you disagree with? Where the science they present is wrong? None of the researchers are even associated with MHB or any other gay organization.
Sounds like you’re dismissing the research just because you don't like its conclusions.
I mean, when I look at your link, the very first "study" they list has "anti-gay microaggressions" in the title. Showing that to people is probably just going to do more to turn them off on the whole idea of gay men using surrogates.
I understand the absolutist-feminist objection to it. I don't understand objections from any other angle unless they boil down to "Gay people are icky and I wish they wouldn't exist". The womb belongs to the woman to use as she should choose, and if she wants to use it to make low six figures bringing a baby into the world in a non-coercive transaction, I don't see the social interest in stopping her (indeed, given birth rates I see the social interest in encouraging her, as RH does). Moreover, I don't see how it's any different having two men doing the renting than having a man and a woman or two women doing the renting. Either way, a rich couple who might not otherwise have a child end up having one that is wanted, loved and supported with a ton of financial resources (And perhaps genetic resources as well). It ought to be everyone's definition of a win-win, no matter the gender of the parents.
"The womb belongs to the woman to use as she should choose, and if she wants to use it to make low six figures bringing a baby into the world in a non-coercive transaction, I don't see the social interest in stopping her (indeed, given birth rates I see the social interest in encouraging her, as RH does)."
But who does the child belong to? Under your mindset, I would question why we don't allow parents to just sell their children outright regardless of age up until the point of majority, as has been done in past times.
Precisely because of that ambiguity, no court will ever force a surrogate to give up to her clients the baby she just carried and birthed, just for the sake of performance on a contract. You'd forego your big payment, of course, but it's still ultimately non-coercive.
So in other words, legally, the baby still "belongs" to the surrogate who carried and birthed her. There are legal protections to that effect, and they are right and good and if anything should be expanded.
"There are a lot of women in the first world who are scared of being pregnant and reasonably don’t want to take time off from their high paying jobs"
They are going to take time off from their jobs, unless they are also planning on paying someone to look after their baby too. Hard to see that any significant number of fertile women would actually do this.
"and many poor women without marketable skills who would happily carry their children for a mutually agreed upon price."
I think you are underestimating how important it is to mother-child bonding to have the baby in her tummy first, and also how painful it is for the surrogate to lose the baby, something she will only find out about afterwards. You can say that every voluntary exchange is ipso facto justified, but this is like saying the crackhead who lost his job, his friends, his wife and kids and now lives in a motel is acting in his rational self interest because right now he cares more about getting high. This doesn't necessarily justify a ban, but safeguards, like a mandatory counselling session outlining the risk for the surrogate mother, seems reasonable.
The question is, can individuals make their own choices about the importance of mother-child bonding or does the government need to step in to protect someone's rights? I think in this situation, both the surrogates and the parents are always going to understand the risks perfectly well.
Poor people can change their circumstances - poverty isn't genetic. But do people know that?
Also, what level of education do these people have? Are they literate? Do they have mental capacity to understand what they're doing, or what their opitions are? Do they even understand how babies are made? How much agence do they have against a system pushing for population control.
The welfare state was manufactured by the government, it needs to be unmanfactured.
Finally, I was born into poverty to a 14 year old, and was adopted out of the nightmare. I am grateful to have been born (as are my parents and my husband) and given up so I could have a better life. I have been able to tell that to my birth mother too.
I know many in my circumstance as well. There are thousands of couples waiting to adopt or foster, but the red tape is awful. Challenges around transracial adoption, in particular, abound. Yet, we are working to make adoption harder, not easier.
Most would agree - certainly RH would, given his writings - that we should make adoption easier, particularly cross-border adoption.
Let's take one of your dilemma's horns here: If an adult is not literate, their ability to earn a decent living is very much curtailed. Surrogacy provides one option for them which is far more attractive than most things facing them at that moment. Risk-wise and money-wise, it beats the hell out of being a lumberjack, or many other careers open to those who can't read. Their agency is their ability to choose how to survive in this world and when and how to better themselves. If I'm making $X / month and $$$ when I deliver, I have a window of time and opportunity to improve myself, as opposed to commuting 3 hours a day to a minimum wage service-industry job like many of my friends. Or to not do so. But I fail to see how they are better off if deprived of the choice.
My comments are on the thread advocating for voluntary sterilization, not RH's post. I've not responded to it directly. That said, re surrogacy, I'm curious how much access potential surrogates, particularly the poor, have before signing a complex commercial contract.
What do you mean by "Access"? They have the set of life opportunities available to them, which are generally bleak.
If your position is that you'd want state or federal law to ensure a baseline of independent counseling and a set of acceptable and unacceptable parameters for a surrogacy contract, I'm on board with that, pending the details. Much like how we set parameters for child labor, or workplace safety, and so on - there's reasonable grounds for believing the free market does not sufficiently account for externalities or risks (humans are bad at estimating risk), and so there should be some ground rules. But that does not extend, in my opinion, as far as banning the practice entirely.
We need to understand the two types of surrogacy first, then then contractual agreement second. I do not support traditional surrogacy at all, period, full stop; I support gestational surrogacy in limited circumstances and only when the carrier is not compensated. The carrier is not genetically related to the child, but will be a special part of his or her life. Moreover, I believe independent surrogacy should be outlawed since the legal, financial, and emotional risks are too high.
I guess I'm not sure what you mean by "traditional surrogacy" as opposed to "gestational surrogacy". I think RH was speaking just of the arrangements where a couple pays someone to get an embryo implanted, carries it to term, gives the couple the baby, and walks away substantially better financially. Certainly that's all I'm speaking of. Although surrogate arrangements are done for a range of reasons on the part of the buyer - infertility as well as life convenience, being a high-risk-pregnancy-haver, and various other categories I'm sure are out there.
Thanks for sharing. Curious, have you read anything that contradicts this claim or challenges it? Wade's book, as I understand it, was widely criticized by evolutionary biologists. I haven't read it, so I'm curious what the buzz was about.
On the subject of positive eugenics, if one supports paying poor women to be surrogates, one should also support paying poor men and women to undergo sterilization right? https://childfreebc.com/candidates/. I for one definitely believe that some people, many people these days, in this dysgenic world in which we live, would be far better off never having been born. This would be better for them, better for their would-be parents come and better for society.
You are opposed to what CBC is doing -- why? Did you read through their website, watch their videos? To me, voluntary sterilization seems to benefit all parties, and society as well? In fact I donated quite a bit there, fully funded & sterilized 4 individuals, and I donate monthly as well. I'd be genuinely curious to hear your perspective.
Your name does check out! I'll ask, though: are you a natalist who believes that those who actively want to sterilize themselves should because we'd all be the better for it? I sometimes wonder about those on the fence who could be convinced to a pro-natalist position if just for a positive direct model in their lives.
Quality > Quantity. Prior to the Industrial Revolution (IR), only the top 10% genetic individuals procreated; the rest either were never born, died in infancy, or died prior to procreating. This was natural selection, eugenic, and good for humanity. The increased SoL brought on by the IR allowed people to live and have children who historically would have never been able to... i.e. humanity flipped from eugenics to dysgenics. Today, this dysgenics is in hyperdrive thanks to redistribution... the lowest IQ people in society, worldwide, are having the most children, global IQs are dropping, and Western Civilization is collapsing. Beyond this, unintended pregnancy & unintended childbirth isn't good for the mother or father either... it traps them in a lifetime of welfare and poverty. And finally, unintended childbirth is terrible for the children. So no one wins, except the Left, who use these people as "useful idiots", to vote for them, to riot, the cause social upheaval.
https://childfreebc.com/candidates/. Everything there is entirely voluntary. And plenty of blacks & browns would happily accept payment to undergo sterilization. So why should we not fund them? Whites only make up 8% of the global population, but control 2/3 of global wealthy, or $300T. A fraction of that donated to CBC could save the West.
If only the top 10% procreated where did all the dysgenesis come from? Shouldn't the low-caliber genes have been washed out? Makes you wonder if eugenics is even worth it.
Inferior genes appear through mutations and genetic chance, even from higher gene parents... that's normal. But normal Darwinian selection pressures will suppress them and prevent them from procreating and thus spreading. Take away the Darwinian selection pressures, and you allow those inferior genes to propagate. Add redistribution, and you worsen this dysgenic effect. I recommend reading Dutton's "At Our Wits' End."
The #1 existential threat to humanity today is DYSGENICS. And the only solution is privatized eugenics.
When I was at Stanford, a couple had taken out a half-page ad in the university newspaper looking for an egg donor for a child. Requirements were: 5'8", blonde, blue eyes, and various intellectual requirements too (1400 SAT or something). Pay was 40k (which seems like nothing now, but was a lot at the time). I was torn between wanting to lecture them about the genetics of hair color and dying my hair blonde. LOL
"Children who are born through surrogacy have wealthy, responsible parents who wanted them."
So the most important thing for children is to have parents who have plenty of money, are responsible and wanted a child so badly, they would pay for one. What do we do about the people who are poor, irresponsible and don't want their kids? What happens when your pro-liberty and utilitarian beliefs are in conflict?
I'm unclear, what does one have to do with the other? Are you trying to argue that if we banned surrogacy, more people would adopt already-born children? If so, I'm a bit doubtful.
This is a sloppy article and dismisses principled objections as icky and trad con religious types and crazy feminists. Typical autistic man child comments. Lazy.
Also weak sauce on not baking and engaging with Mary Harrington.
Well said. I think surrogacy is something that feels sort of new and scary to some people, particularly the trad religious crowd. But it is such a net positive that I think it will just become more mainstream over time.
It’s the same impulse as being against organ markets. In this case you are renting instead of buying an organ. People find it icky, and then use shitty arguments to rationalize their gut feeling.
Just curious: why is it also not as simple as your finding the 'restriction' of the interaction or agency 'icky' and then rationalizing some ideas like "free market" and "bodily autonomy" in response?
My point being that a human cannot escape human emotions, and the restriction of some free exchange in the name of autonomy is triggering disgust in you.
Many US states allow surrogacy contracts to include forced-abortion clauses. As in, the purchasers can demand that the child be killed, even if the surrogate mother disagrees. An Internet search will turn up many examples.
If abortion and surrogacy were truly about "empowering women" to "control their own bodies," this would of course be grossly illegal, anyone who tried to force a woman to kill the child in her womb would face a lengthy jail sentence. But they don't, because it's not about that at all.
Some of these cases involve born children outside the womb: the woman is obligated to give birth prematurely, and then the contract forbids doctors from providing lifesaving care.
Enforcing contracts is just a small, if important, part of individual liberty. And there is no way forcing a woman to abort a surrogate baby is consistent with the "woman's body" justification of prohibiting bans on abortion. Just like you can say if you don't want a forced abortion, don't sign a contract for it, you can say if you don't want to have a baby, don't get pregnant (provided there is an exception allowing abortion after a rape).
Not saying you can't be intellectually consistent and want to allow forced abortion of surrogacy babies and also prohibit laws against abortion, but the justification for prohibiting laws against abortion can't be the "woman's body" justification.
That is certainly an important moral area, but I doubt that there are a lot of cases where the birth parents want the child aborted and the surrogate decides they want to keep it instead.
If the government banned such clauses from contracts would you then have no problem with surrogacy? Sometimes people make a logical sounding edge-case argument to hide the fact that their ultimate belief isn't logical at all.
I would still feel uncomfortable with it, but not enough to strongly advocate for banning it (by which I mean make the contracts unenforceable, we definitely should not restrict it further than that).
My current, weakly-held view (which has shifted slightly from when I wrote OP) is that we need to experiment. Different countries and states should try different surrogacy laws according to their own values; it will take decades, perhaps even centuries, before we have a full picture of the effects and unintended consequences. (We still haven’t figured out the full implications of contraception! These are fundamental changes to the most important aspect of human life)
The thought had occurred to me, but I'm sure he could make more money without the normies than with them. Plus this fits with all his other libertarian beliefs.
This is quite a dry, transactional approach. What does it mean for a women to bear a child? How important is it for a child to have a mother and a father, and ideally their real parents as their parents? Over the long term what is the most stable (and happy) form of family life? How do we best promote that as a society?
The stable and happy form of family life we want is one where the children are loved and the parents treat each other well and stay together. Which homosexual-parent households do just as well as heterosexual-parent ones. See e.g. (study linked within):
https://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthart/2023/03/06/kids-raised-by-same-sex-parents-fare-same-as-or-better-than-kids-of-straight-couples-research-finds/?sh=110e6b57738e
Just like how the pro-life movement is undermined by its supporters' lack of enthusiasm for any support for children *after* their birth, pro-family advocates who might otherwise win some people to their way of thinking end up focusing less on what can encourage parents to stay together, and more on their belief that gay people shouldn't be parents. Which makes people realize that it's not about being pro-family at all, but rather that's a thin veneer for hate. If you're actually pro-family, you want more kids born to smaller households who love them and can afford to take care of them and where the parents stay together. As the slogan of another movement has it: love is love. All other factors pale in comparison.
"Research finds". What else was it ever going to find!? There's a reason that sociology has a replication crisis.
And your evidence in reply is vibes-based, I'm assuming?
This is a data-friendly community. That which can be asserted without evidence can likewise be dismissed without evidence.
The idea that normalization of "gay marriage" has been motivated by some kind of empirical evidence is beyond farcical. Surely you aren't trying to make such a claim?
I'm a conservative - I think the burden of evidence for change lies with the person advocating for change. We have a set of normative social relationships established over [hundreds at least] years, that's the key piece of evidence. Rights based changes (not evidence based), followed by some random sociology study don't begin to constitute evidence to make the changes we've made.
I dunno, man. Orphanages are also part of our cultural heritage. As was the Victorian practice of shipping kids out to spend their teen years in a house that's not their parent's, to toughen them up or something. I think the benefits of "growing up in a household where the parents want them, love them and can afford to take care of them" are apparent enough that it probably doesn't need discussion, no? Like, that notion isn't "advocating for social change" the way that, say, advocating for "maybe police shouldn't view minorities as threats as a default setting" would be. A positive family environment IS the default for a majority of children, but tragically far from a universal experience. Trying to close that gap doesn't seem contrary to the current social order, if anything it would reinforce it.
Marriage is a pretty magical thing, it gives a structure for men and women to form a joint enterprise that marries their respective strengths and weaknesses, and ideally produces offspring who share genes with both their parents (which I'm sure is highly positively correlated with good parenting vs the alternative, abusive step dads etc). Thanks to modern American politics, we're now playing a game to say that marriage is just a thing where two people really like to have sex with each other, and then we want to dignify this new definition with children, thus surrogacy. We're kind of saying it doesn't matter if you don't have a father and a mother, those things weren't actually such a big deal. I'm hoping that we one day look back on this time as we now look back on Victorian orphanages and boarding schools.
Orphanges are a recent invention. Historically, children who were orphaned were raised by grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, etc. They stayed within the family.
There are plenty of stories about adoptees who had terrible family lives despite being wanted and provided for and others who had nice, loving families but always felt different and wished they were raised by their biological parent(s). Perhaps love just ain't enough.
That's status quo bias by definition. And in a world so different from that of two centuries ago, there is no safety in status quo.
I know this is late- but just according to the article, it’s an analysis of 34 studies taking place between 1989-2022 in several different countries with legalized SSM. Are you arguing that all 34 studies have been flawed in every country over a 33 year period? I’m trying to understand why this doesn’t pass your benchmark
I do think that we live in a world that "research finds" that everything is fine with gay people, regardless of whether or not that's true.
But if you believe we should infringe on liberty, you still need to provide actual evidence. More than vibes.
And if you want to prevent a class of people from reproducing, you'd better show that they make *particularly* awful parents.
If you're about to bite both bullets - to say that bad parents should be prevented from having children, and also that gay people make uniquely bad parents - that would at least be an argument. But if you're just vaguely asking "what is good?" then I don't see the relevance of your comments.
Gay couples can't have children or reproduce, by definition. I mean, I suppose they could reproduce despite their claimed sexual preferences, but if they then actually marry the person they reproduced with and raised their child together, one has to question whether they're really gay anymore at that point. In a typical "gay marriage," obviously the child can only be the child of one of the "parents," at best.
Are the Black Hebrew Israelites "pro-Jew" when they come along and proclaim themselves to be "the real Jews?" Would any actual pro-Jewish person go along with such nonsense, or would they condemn it as anti-semitism?
It's the same when cohabitating homosexuals come along and claim to be a "family." Accepting this claim undermines the entire concept of a "family," as it no longer has any meaningful qualifications. It would now mean just any combination of people who live in close proximity and claim to "love each other," totally disconnected from behavior, biology, or anything else tangible.
By this logic, we should encourage a re-flourishing of polygamy, as it is once again entirely compatible with our brave new definition of "family." Why can't one man and eight wives raise however many of their children? At least the kids of such an arrangement would actually be the children of the people raising them.
you seem to have a view of gay people raising children that regards it as comparable to the robots in the Matrix raising humans as a power source. I suggest you get out there and actually meet some real gay people, and see how they're raising children (i.e., as lovingly as any other parent, on average).
One proposed mechanism to explain why homosexuality evolved - in all highly social species, beyond even primates, and across all human societies - is that gay people are a social safety net to help the children of close relatives (called "kin selection"). There are also other evolutionary adaptations it is linked with, such as reduced male aggression and increased female fertility in kin.
https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2023-10-03/homosexuality-in-mammals-has-evolutionary-utility-new-study-finds.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biology_and_sexual_orientation#Sexual_orientation_and_evolution
https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/190987/scientists-explore-evolution-animal-homosexuality/
TLDR: Gay people were genetically engineered to be good at raising children, in a manner of speaking. It takes a village to raise a child. Highly restrictive notions of what a family is or is not do not reflect observed reality within human societies.
If we look at "observed reality within human societies," obviously you will find that the modern notion of "gay marriage" was non-existent until about 5 seconds ago, and remains non-existent among the majority of the world's population. So I wouldn't lean on that phrase if I were you.
If the idea that people are now doing it means that it is good and acceptable because it is now "observed reality," this is a tautology. Slavery was also an observed reality of basically every human society until relatively recently. This doesn't mean slavery is morally desirable.
It might be nice to pretend that we could somehow decide this issue with "data," but unfortunately, we live in a situation where so-called "data" regarding anything vaguely related to homosexuality is beyond untrustworthy. And if we're being honest, this is not a "data" issue. Just as the gay rights advocates of both decades past and the present day form their view based on moral priors first, then maybe search out data later, I also choose to base my viewpoint on moral axioms rather than attempting to sort through statistical analyses. You almost certainly do as well, if you were being honest about it. This is an issue of first principles, not of numbers on spreadsheets.
And yes, the notion of what a family is, is highly restrictive. Definitions of words are highly restrictive, by definition. Otherwise they aren't definitions and the words don't mean anything. Just as red is not green and men are not women, two homosexual people cohabitating with someone else's child is not a "family."
> its supporters' lack of enthusiasm for any support for children *after* their birth
What does this refer to?
This is a really weak take.
Utilitarianism seems to be the most selfish, anti-human theory. Surrogacy is human trafficking. Period. It denies the humanity of mother, child, and father. Woof.
How does it deny anyones’s humanity? What does that even mean?
If, as in some science fiction, we developed artificial wombs, would that turn children gestated in them into non-humans?
Does adoption deny humanity?
Surrogacy isn't just about the baby. The creation of life is an integrated experience of both mother and child. Renting a womb and then receiving a baby you've bought is commercialism to its core, transactional and lacking in humanity for all involved. Lacking humanity =/= non human.
If that’s the way you feel, more power to you; no one is forcing you to use a surrogate. The question is whether the force of government power should prevent others from following their own moral frameworks in order to be forced to follow yours.
Should the force of government be used to prevent any of the following:
--Pedophilia and/or viewing of child pornography
--Necrophilia
--Incest
--Bestiality
--Polygamy
I don't see how any of these can be reasonably outlawed by "the force of government" under your framework, except maaaybe pedophilia, but even then, it is certain that you could find examples of people who had sex as minors with adults and never regretted it or felt that it harmed them.
I think those are not all analogous.
Pedo is obvious; children cannot give legally effective consent. Same with viewing of child pornography that involves actual child performers. It is difficult to justify banning this material if it involves youthful looking adults, computer-generated images, or animation.
Necrophilia is admittedly quite gross. I'd suggest it's usually a property rights violation -- someone owns the corpse, and usually they don't consent. I recognize that I want to ban renting out grandma's corpse for pleasure, even if grandma agreed in advance and the grandkids are OK with the cash, but it's hard to do within a libertarian framework.
Incest is very seldom adult brothers and sisters getting it on consensually; usually it's a species of sexual assault. There are certainly edge cases and cases where people don't feel victimized. But I think we have to have a number, rather than making judgment calls.
Bestiality is gross, and I don't necessarily have a problem with banning animal abuse, even if animals don't get full human rights.
Polygamy, even consensual, has serious social externalities. It's probably impossibly to maintain an advanced technological democratic society if polygamy becomes widespread. I'm fine with banning it.
"Pedo is obvious; children cannot give legally effective consent."
Why not? Again, I guarantee you that if you looked, you could find examples of people who had sex as minors and claim to be fine with the experience. I can even think of one off the top of my head; Milo Yiannopoulis, who was canceled for saying that his sexual experiences with an adult when he was 15 were a positive experience for him.
Your comment generally seems to recognize, though, that mere "consent" is unworkable as a means by which to regulate sexual degeneracy.
Yes, ban the sale of wombs for rent.
In the bigger picture, we’ve lost any common moral framework in this country. John Adams knew our govt couldn’t work wo one. What society can, really?
Well if your position is "screw your morality, adopt my morality" I see no reason that anyone adopt your position if they don't already hold it.
I respect your opinion (a little), but it's not convincing.
My position is not screwing moralities. It's looking at history and societies to see which, if any, have succeeded with contrasting moralities or underlying belief systems. And succeeded, meaning flourished. Can you identify a flourishing, successful society with multiple moral / belief systems operating at the same time?
My friend used a surrogate after she had to have a hysterectomy. I understood that it was the only "technology" available for her to have her own biological children. She and her husband didn't come to the decision lightly, and they did all they could to help and care for the surrogate. Maybe you would call this a sympathetic case?
I don't see commercialism to its core. On one side, sure. On the other side though, they are valuing the child in a different way. Commercialism to it's core is me getting a pickup truck with 430 horsepower.
Do you see financially well off women renting their wombs?
And interestingly, your pickup truck idea is a machine. Renting wombs turns women's bodies into machines, so to speak. <3 We are in a machine. I highly rec Paul Kingnorth's substack on this!
I can see the emotional side of things, wanting one's own bio baby. But we don't get everything in life that we want. Our society has lost any sense of this. Thus, renting wombs. Regardless of the emotional plight of those involved, it's still renting a womb. It's a commercial exchange, plain and simple. Once the baby is born, the surrogate has no involvement left.
The "parents" are more arguable, but you can definitely argue that the humanity of the child is denied in how they are bartered away by their mother for money. I wonder what surrogacy advocates would say to a child born of surrogacy who grows up to resent that he or she was created in such a manner, feeling that they were born merely to satisfy the whims of others. This isn't a problem yet because surrogacy is still pretty much a brand new practice, but it seems likely that this may begin to surface in a few decades when all these surrogate babies grow up and finally acquire agency of their own. They may decide that they aren't very comfortable with the fact that their birth mothers bore them simply so they could be given away for money.
They might indeed feel that way, but of course they get to feel that way because they are alive. In many if not most cases, they wouldn't exist at all were it not for the procedure. I probably wouldn't care, but I'd rather have some slight angst and be alive rather than never having been born. It's also possibly they'll feel great about it -- special, having known their genetic parents were willing to spend $100,000 to have them.
Also, you use the term "mother" to refer to the person who does the gestation. A DNA test would show the mother is the person who supplied the egg.
"They might indeed feel that way, but of course they get to feel that way because they are alive. In many if not most cases, they wouldn't exist at all were it not for the procedure."
Is the idea here that we can do whatever we want with a life after it has been created, because the life "owes" its creators in some existential manner? Because we can imagine disproving counter-examples for this notion with extreme ease. For instance, imagine couples hiring surrogates to give birth to extra children of theirs for the express purpose of having compatible organs to harvest should they ever need a transplant.
"I probably wouldn't care, but I'd rather have some slight angst and be alive rather than never having been born. It's also possibly they'll feel great about it -- special, having known their genetic parents were willing to spend $100,000 to have them."
I agree it is almost certain some children of surrogates wouldn't be bothered by the details of their creation and birth. But if any of them were, you have to basically write off their concerns as illegitimate decades in advance, in order to support the practice. This seems to me an obvious denial of agency in the same way that abortion denies the child their right to live in service of an adult's convenience.
"Also, you use the term "mother" to refer to the person who does the gestation. A DNA test would show the mother is the person who supplied the egg."
That is one form of surrogacy, yes, but surrogacy also takes place in which the mother gestating the child is also its actual genetic mother; in the case of gay couples, you could even have a situation where the gestating mother and the genetic mother are different and *neither one* is even involved in the child's life after its initial conception and birth.
Regardless, it is not at all clear that the woman who actually carries a fetus to term somehow has no motherly connection to them (indeed, as another poster has noted in this comments section, it would be directly contrary to human biology to claim this).
Personhood theory writ large is a disaster. Utilitarians have no basis for claims of human rights or dignity.
what about the dignity of people to decide what to do with their own bodies? Or is that only allowed if you like the choices they would make?
What is the source of human dignity? As for choice, how much agency constitutes choice? Where do these people get the idea that voluntary sterilization is good for them?
After listening to oral arguments in a dozen abortion cases before SCOTUS, I was stunned to learn what those seeking to remove safeguards from the procedure consider choice. They want to be sure pregnant women have as as little info as possible. I was stunned.
I'm a bit unclear on what consent looks like in these arguments too .... what constitutes sufficient consent for permanent medical procedures?
I thought we were talking about surrogacy, not whatever it is you seem to be talking about.
I was responding to a comment about sterilization ... no need to be dismissive.
Poppy Gordon's post was (still) about surrogacy, unless I'm mistaken. Maybe you clicked on the wrong thing?
There are certainly some well reasoned critiques of utilitarianism out there, but defending that seems beyond the scope of the article imo.
Is it dignified to sell body parts or rent body parts? Prostitution is a dignified occupation and it's just the screeching moral scolds who oppose it.
The issue with your take and Hannania's is that everything under the sun is up for sale. Nothing is off limits. Nothing is special or unique. Endless substitution.
We set plenty of limits for what is for sale. Or at least, I think a number of limits we have today are good ones, even if we might want some of them tweaked. e.g.:
- Someone cannot consent to being killed (except in euthanasia situations), and in fact cannot consent to grievous bodily harm even if non-fatal. There is a social interest in preventing you from doing so even if someone would meet your asking price.
- Generally, you can't take public goods and use them to derive private profit while damaging them, e.g. dumping industrial waste into water sources.
- Kids whose parents could not afford to keep them would occasionally be put up for sale in days gone by. That no longer happens and there are social services to provide alternatives.
- Various other market failures provide classes of situation where something cannot be bought even if there is a mutually agreeable price, such as with anti-trust cases.
- Fraud statutes are a good thing, even if some libertarians disagree: you should always get what you bargained for, and someone misrepresenting what they're selling you should be held to account.
And lest I appear unsentimental, I think most people (even customer of sex workers) would agree that while being a customer can be fun and/or get the job done, there is really no substitute for having sex with someone you love and who loves you back. It's an entirely different class of experience that is simply not for sale, because it being freely mutually given is part of what makes it special. There's a manner in which it's analogous to renting vs owning your home, although sex partners are of course not property.
As to body parts, I will let Scott Alexander's recent article on donating his kidney (not even selling it!) stand in testament to the moral value of such things, and addressing various concerns someone might have.
Steve, people can consent to serious non-fatal bodily harm, or at least a high risk thereof. Football and MMA fighting both involve battery, absent consent. Both can cause permanent injury, or even death. That is rare, but nearly all retired NFL players have serious health issues. I saw a documentary about Jason Kelce, and he basically can’t walk without taking anti inflammatory medication. And he’s still playing!
they can consent to *the risk* thereof. For the same reason they can sign up to be fire jumpers: they understand the risks, accept them, and take the pay (or thrill) that goes with it. You can consent to being a ski patroller even if you might break a leg or get buried in an avalanche. But you can't consent to letting someone stab you for money or beat you up for money. That's not "risk that comes with the job", that's just encouragement of cruelty and sadism with no social benefit to it whatsoever. Even in BDSM situations, a dom can cause pain but can't cause permanent damage. A purist libertarian would argue that it should all be allowed, of course... but I bring it up as an example of how we have limits to what we allow people to consent to in our society. There are many others, as noted.
"- Someone cannot consent to being killed (except in euthanasia situations), and in fact cannot consent to grievous bodily harm even if non-fatal. There is a social interest in preventing you from doing so even if someone would meet your asking price."
What is the "social interest" to such a thing? This sounds exactly like the sort of reasoning typically used to justify the outlawing of prostitution. It's bad for society overall, even if a small minority of people are able to benefit from it.
You agree we need limits on what can be bought and sold, we just disagree about what those limits on surrogacy should be.
In your first example, what is the social interest?
On the sale of children, there are alternatives (social services). The same alternative exists for the childless, adoption. Why is that not enough? It's because the demand exceeds.
Prostitution is dignified? That’s why all the elite families hope and steer their daughters to become prostitutes?
Utilitarianism is the most pro-human theory. It seeks to maximize human utility, in opposition to abstract and subjective ideals of "justice", "godliness", and "nature".
"Human utility" is of course an abstract and subjective term. If you ask one person what gives them the greatest happiness in life, they may say their devotion to God. Another might cite their sexual conquests, and another their ability to smoke weed and watch Netflix all day.
Utility. Right there is where it jumps the cliff off of being for humans into a machine world.
This is exactly the sort of article I signed up to read from RH originally. Clear thinking, incorporating both pragmatic and ethical lines of thought, without pre-existing partisan or groupthink bias. The more he writes stuff like this, and the less he writes about race (on which he has a screeching level of blind spot and groupthink imo), the more readers he'll gain among centrists and intellectuals. Which I gather is one of his goals.
I assume that's why he wrote an extensive letter here on Substack after getting roundly critiqued in the national conversation for his former pseudonymous publications, a letter about how he used to hold shitty views on race and gender when he was a younger, angrier man, and now he doesn't think that way anymore.
But hey, I'm sure RH will "come around eventually" too, huh?
I have no problem with IVF or surrogacy other than one small issue. I am a woman who has successfully birthed 2 children. I had no real attachment to either of my children during my pregnancies. They were abstract. As I gave birth to them, something released inside me. I don't know if it was a rush of hormones or adrenaline or something else. Immediately (this cannot be explained in terms to anyone who has not given birth), I felt this overwhelming love, proteciveness, and link with this new human. It was weird and I've never felt that way with any other life event. I don't necessarily think it will be bad for society to have children through surrogates, I just don't actually know if that specific kind of bond is possible without the actual act of giving birth.
Not exactly rocket science that the female body is designed to create an overriding protective bond with her child when giving birth. The evolutionary basis for this is obvious. An inconvenient fact of biology that today's moral relativists would prefer to ignore.
Brandy, I have experience with IVF practitioners. An easy starting point for you is to consider this - a fertility doctor lied to my face about the process. You can and ought to draw your own conclusions from that. Dig deeper if you must, but it ain’t pretty.
I'd love to hear more, but I will certainly do some digging. Thanks for the tip
I have heard the same hints from others. It would seem natural = best.
Surely they won't have less of a bond than a person who adopts a child from a different family. Yet I don't see anyone advocating to prevent adoptions. I think most people are using surrogates when they CAN'T have kids on their own.
Surrogacy is buying people; barely disguised facsimiles of slave markets from the 1800s.
The big difference is that the child is not a slave. Therefore it's probably not best to compare it to 19th century slave markets.
Nor is the surrogate a slave; nobody will force or even strongly encourage them to agree to a surrogacy deal. It has to be very much worth their while, which is why the going rate is somewhere north of $100k for 10-11 months' work.
Nobody is being auctioned, nor forced to indefinite terms of labor. Indeed, in most cases the surrogate has a right to decide to keep the baby in lieu of payment. The analogy to slavery is equal parts wrong and disgusting.
Nope, you’re wrong. Children have diminished rights. They are subject to the whims and objectives of the parents. We accept this with children conceived by the parents, because we all believe that biology guides the parents to have, in total, THEIR children’s best interest in their hearts. With surrogacy (liberally seasoned with the techniques of in vitro fertilization - also an evil practice) you have a situation where some children (conceived embryos are treated as less than human, meaning placed in a freezer to most likely die of neglect) are treated as much less than human, and a few selected children get denied the right to grow up with their biological parents because one or several adults paid to remove the child from their parents. VERY much reminiscent of a slave marketplace.
You seem to be advocating against adoption, not surrogacy. In most cases a surrogate is carrying the baby that is genetically derived from the couple who hired the surrogate, so it will be "related to them", which seems to matter to you (though it wouldn't to me). I fail to see how this is an argument against surrogacy.
Also, this is moving the goalposts from your initial critique comparing the practice to slavery, which you did not address.
So, the surrogate, carrying a human they are not related to, what are they experiencing for nine months? Pregnancy? Yes. How did they get pregnant? IVF? I believe IVF is plainly immoral (I have direct experience with this industry - don’t get me started). A father copulated with the surrogate?(not his wife)? That’s also plainly immoral (at least it was until five minutes ago).
My understanding is that it is generally done via IVF, yes. RH addresses the topic in his post, at length.
Anyway, that factor dealt with, I assume we can now count you as a supporter of surrogacy, yes?
No, IVF is immoral and one of characteristics that makes it equal to slaving.
I addressed the slavery characterization - re-read carefully. Slave markets denied the humanity of the slave. Surrogacy markets deny the human of conceived human beings.
Their humanity is being honored in myriad ways, including:
(1) being conceived and born at all, which absent the surrogacy agreement they may not have been (plenty of surrogacy is done due to infertility, not just convenience, of the would-be parents).
(2) being born into a family that wants them and loves them, which views them as a blessing and not a burden - something which we all would want for ourselves and our children and others' children, I assume. Indeed, brought into a family that has gone to great expense to bring them into the world and into their family.
The children are not for sale to the highest bidder, they are being carried for the specific benefit of the child and the parents who want them. Nobody else, save the surrogate, will end up with them. I fail to see how that's in any way comparable to slavery, unless you regard every instance of childhood to be slavery because children are expected to do what their parents tell them (or make them do).
And all the IVF conceived humans surplus to the purchasers’ needs sit on ice for years to be, in most cases, thrown away in the medical trash. The Mongols were pretty brutal - but at least they saw that those they were killing were human beings. Today we just put up blinders and “poof” - it’s okay to do that evil thing.
How do they deny humanity of the children.
Yes, for most of human history, the genetic mother was the one who bore the child for nine (or slightly fewer) months. With surrogacy, the genetic mother and mother with the womb are different humans.
The child is still human.
And even the implanted embryo is denied the natural gestation in their natural mother - that’s something that the child deserves but the parents are denying them, because the parents “want” something, which they acquire at the expense of sacrificing a not yet conceived human’s right to be born by their actual mother. Parents should sacrifice their interests for children, not the other way around.
No, only the implanted child is treated “like” a human. The discarded, extra embryos created by IVF (look it up) are treated as non-human property despite them meeting the definition of “human” (distinct genetic code not the mother’s, metabolic indicators of life, not a different species from the mother, not a virus). This is why surrogacy is analogous to slavery. The dehumanization of actual humans. Read Horton Hears a Who - a child’s book can clearly indicate that this is true - humanity is not a function of size.
You're calling an embryo a child?
Correct. It’s not a giraffe. It’s not a whale. It has the metabolic activity of a living creature. It is a human in the earliest stage of development.
However, in the same way that a slave is denied agency, the child here is transacted for money with no choice in the matter. If they grow up questioning how they feel about their mother giving them away for money, too bad, so sad for them. That consideration is apparently irrelevant.
So you are opposed to adoption of any kind? What about fostering? Should we bring back orphanages or simply kill any kid who has lost their biological parents?
Most on the online right aren't anti-surrogate, they just object to gay men using surrogates—for entirely legitimate reasons
The ones that use their own name and actually have any influence in the real world are crazy feminists and socialists who oppose surrogacy in all cases. This is the best argument for LGBT I’ve ever seen.
I never got this trad con argument that these things are a special variety of taking money for unpleasant labor. No problem at all with men doing dirty, miserable, dangerous jobs for money. I totally get the "locked in mutually destructive arms races" argument about regulating individual behavior when a system doesn't allow you to opt out unilaterally when you can't count on others to do so also. But why do trad cons make a special exception for things with it allegedly just a coincidence these things are Jesusy? It's weird how trad con women can't see the self interest in their moral views which amount to rigging mate markets in ways that adjudicate their specific tradeoffs better. But they can easily see this in feminism. It's simply no coincidence that self interest metrics are the best predictors of moralizing around things like abortion and surrogacy.
In the US and Canada, gay surrogacy works well. All sides are protected, the surrogates' motivation is helping people, and the children have good outcomes:
https://menhavingbabies.org/surrogacy-resources/research-library/
I know several gay couples who saved up a lot of money and had a bunch of kids via surrogacy. They raise them at least as well as any straight couple.
I'll just say observing those gay couples, it's sort of that they lose a lot of the "bad" things associated with women as well as some bad things associated with straight men. For instance, HBD folks talk all the time about the differences in average aggression between white and black men. There's a similar effect going on where gay men are less aggressive. In fact, gay men are less delinquent than even straight women*. In a modern environment, male homosexuality may well lead to superior parenting, and various other things traditionalists pride. I won't discuss what the advantages over women as those feel culture warry. But it does seem like gay couples have a lot of advantages (even if we just limit the discussion to traditional family life) over straight couples.
* https://twitter.com/cremieuxrecueil/status/1648386989085933568
A site called "menhavingbabies.org" presents us with research showing that the "children" of gay couples have good outcomes. Wow, that's a shocker.
This is fallacious reasoning through and through. Literally, the genetic fallacy:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_fallacy
Can you tell me what about the research they present you disagree with? Where the science they present is wrong? None of the researchers are even associated with MHB or any other gay organization.
Sounds like you’re dismissing the research just because you don't like its conclusions.
I mean, when I look at your link, the very first "study" they list has "anti-gay microaggressions" in the title. Showing that to people is probably just going to do more to turn them off on the whole idea of gay men using surrogates.
??? Do they think gayness is hereditary? Or is it that if gays want it they need to be against it on thermostat grounds?
Do you seriously not understand the objection to two men renting out a womb?
I understand the absolutist-feminist objection to it. I don't understand objections from any other angle unless they boil down to "Gay people are icky and I wish they wouldn't exist". The womb belongs to the woman to use as she should choose, and if she wants to use it to make low six figures bringing a baby into the world in a non-coercive transaction, I don't see the social interest in stopping her (indeed, given birth rates I see the social interest in encouraging her, as RH does). Moreover, I don't see how it's any different having two men doing the renting than having a man and a woman or two women doing the renting. Either way, a rich couple who might not otherwise have a child end up having one that is wanted, loved and supported with a ton of financial resources (And perhaps genetic resources as well). It ought to be everyone's definition of a win-win, no matter the gender of the parents.
"The womb belongs to the woman to use as she should choose, and if she wants to use it to make low six figures bringing a baby into the world in a non-coercive transaction, I don't see the social interest in stopping her (indeed, given birth rates I see the social interest in encouraging her, as RH does)."
But who does the child belong to? Under your mindset, I would question why we don't allow parents to just sell their children outright regardless of age up until the point of majority, as has been done in past times.
Precisely because of that ambiguity, no court will ever force a surrogate to give up to her clients the baby she just carried and birthed, just for the sake of performance on a contract. You'd forego your big payment, of course, but it's still ultimately non-coercive.
So in other words, legally, the baby still "belongs" to the surrogate who carried and birthed her. There are legal protections to that effect, and they are right and good and if anything should be expanded.
You realize this does not at all address my question and concern of parents selling their children, and if anything simply confirms it?
"There are a lot of women in the first world who are scared of being pregnant and reasonably don’t want to take time off from their high paying jobs"
They are going to take time off from their jobs, unless they are also planning on paying someone to look after their baby too. Hard to see that any significant number of fertile women would actually do this.
"and many poor women without marketable skills who would happily carry their children for a mutually agreed upon price."
I think you are underestimating how important it is to mother-child bonding to have the baby in her tummy first, and also how painful it is for the surrogate to lose the baby, something she will only find out about afterwards. You can say that every voluntary exchange is ipso facto justified, but this is like saying the crackhead who lost his job, his friends, his wife and kids and now lives in a motel is acting in his rational self interest because right now he cares more about getting high. This doesn't necessarily justify a ban, but safeguards, like a mandatory counselling session outlining the risk for the surrogate mother, seems reasonable.
The question is, can individuals make their own choices about the importance of mother-child bonding or does the government need to step in to protect someone's rights? I think in this situation, both the surrogates and the parents are always going to understand the risks perfectly well.
Some thoughts ...
Poor people can change their circumstances - poverty isn't genetic. But do people know that?
Also, what level of education do these people have? Are they literate? Do they have mental capacity to understand what they're doing, or what their opitions are? Do they even understand how babies are made? How much agence do they have against a system pushing for population control.
The welfare state was manufactured by the government, it needs to be unmanfactured.
Finally, I was born into poverty to a 14 year old, and was adopted out of the nightmare. I am grateful to have been born (as are my parents and my husband) and given up so I could have a better life. I have been able to tell that to my birth mother too.
I know many in my circumstance as well. There are thousands of couples waiting to adopt or foster, but the red tape is awful. Challenges around transracial adoption, in particular, abound. Yet, we are working to make adoption harder, not easier.
Sterilization isn't the solution.
Nobody here advocated for sterilization.
Most would agree - certainly RH would, given his writings - that we should make adoption easier, particularly cross-border adoption.
Let's take one of your dilemma's horns here: If an adult is not literate, their ability to earn a decent living is very much curtailed. Surrogacy provides one option for them which is far more attractive than most things facing them at that moment. Risk-wise and money-wise, it beats the hell out of being a lumberjack, or many other careers open to those who can't read. Their agency is their ability to choose how to survive in this world and when and how to better themselves. If I'm making $X / month and $$$ when I deliver, I have a window of time and opportunity to improve myself, as opposed to commuting 3 hours a day to a minimum wage service-industry job like many of my friends. Or to not do so. But I fail to see how they are better off if deprived of the choice.
My comments are on the thread advocating for voluntary sterilization, not RH's post. I've not responded to it directly. That said, re surrogacy, I'm curious how much access potential surrogates, particularly the poor, have before signing a complex commercial contract.
What do you mean by "Access"? They have the set of life opportunities available to them, which are generally bleak.
If your position is that you'd want state or federal law to ensure a baseline of independent counseling and a set of acceptable and unacceptable parameters for a surrogacy contract, I'm on board with that, pending the details. Much like how we set parameters for child labor, or workplace safety, and so on - there's reasonable grounds for believing the free market does not sufficiently account for externalities or risks (humans are bad at estimating risk), and so there should be some ground rules. But that does not extend, in my opinion, as far as banning the practice entirely.
We need to understand the two types of surrogacy first, then then contractual agreement second. I do not support traditional surrogacy at all, period, full stop; I support gestational surrogacy in limited circumstances and only when the carrier is not compensated. The carrier is not genetically related to the child, but will be a special part of his or her life. Moreover, I believe independent surrogacy should be outlawed since the legal, financial, and emotional risks are too high.
I guess I'm not sure what you mean by "traditional surrogacy" as opposed to "gestational surrogacy". I think RH was speaking just of the arrangements where a couple pays someone to get an embryo implanted, carries it to term, gives the couple the baby, and walks away substantially better financially. Certainly that's all I'm speaking of. Although surrogate arrangements are done for a range of reasons on the part of the buyer - infertility as well as life convenience, being a high-risk-pregnancy-haver, and various other categories I'm sure are out there.
Traditional surrogacy is when the surrogate contributes her own egg; gestational is when the surrogate has no biological relation the the child.
Which components are those?
Are you arguing causation or correlation? Can you share some studies/data with me? Thanks.
Thanks for sharing. Curious, have you read anything that contradicts this claim or challenges it? Wade's book, as I understand it, was widely criticized by evolutionary biologists. I haven't read it, so I'm curious what the buzz was about.
On the subject of positive eugenics, if one supports paying poor women to be surrogates, one should also support paying poor men and women to undergo sterilization right? https://childfreebc.com/candidates/. I for one definitely believe that some people, many people these days, in this dysgenic world in which we live, would be far better off never having been born. This would be better for them, better for their would-be parents come and better for society.
Wow, just wow.
You are opposed to what CBC is doing -- why? Did you read through their website, watch their videos? To me, voluntary sterilization seems to benefit all parties, and society as well? In fact I donated quite a bit there, fully funded & sterilized 4 individuals, and I donate monthly as well. I'd be genuinely curious to hear your perspective.
Your name does check out! I'll ask, though: are you a natalist who believes that those who actively want to sterilize themselves should because we'd all be the better for it? I sometimes wonder about those on the fence who could be convinced to a pro-natalist position if just for a positive direct model in their lives.
Quality > Quantity. Prior to the Industrial Revolution (IR), only the top 10% genetic individuals procreated; the rest either were never born, died in infancy, or died prior to procreating. This was natural selection, eugenic, and good for humanity. The increased SoL brought on by the IR allowed people to live and have children who historically would have never been able to... i.e. humanity flipped from eugenics to dysgenics. Today, this dysgenics is in hyperdrive thanks to redistribution... the lowest IQ people in society, worldwide, are having the most children, global IQs are dropping, and Western Civilization is collapsing. Beyond this, unintended pregnancy & unintended childbirth isn't good for the mother or father either... it traps them in a lifetime of welfare and poverty. And finally, unintended childbirth is terrible for the children. So no one wins, except the Left, who use these people as "useful idiots", to vote for them, to riot, the cause social upheaval.
https://childfreebc.com/candidates/. Everything there is entirely voluntary. And plenty of blacks & browns would happily accept payment to undergo sterilization. So why should we not fund them? Whites only make up 8% of the global population, but control 2/3 of global wealthy, or $300T. A fraction of that donated to CBC could save the West.
Hey, man, leave my flat feet alone!
If only the top 10% procreated where did all the dysgenesis come from? Shouldn't the low-caliber genes have been washed out? Makes you wonder if eugenics is even worth it.
Inferior genes appear through mutations and genetic chance, even from higher gene parents... that's normal. But normal Darwinian selection pressures will suppress them and prevent them from procreating and thus spreading. Take away the Darwinian selection pressures, and you allow those inferior genes to propagate. Add redistribution, and you worsen this dysgenic effect. I recommend reading Dutton's "At Our Wits' End."
The #1 existential threat to humanity today is DYSGENICS. And the only solution is privatized eugenics.
When I was at Stanford, a couple had taken out a half-page ad in the university newspaper looking for an egg donor for a child. Requirements were: 5'8", blonde, blue eyes, and various intellectual requirements too (1400 SAT or something). Pay was 40k (which seems like nothing now, but was a lot at the time). I was torn between wanting to lecture them about the genetics of hair color and dying my hair blonde. LOL
"Children who are born through surrogacy have wealthy, responsible parents who wanted them."
So the most important thing for children is to have parents who have plenty of money, are responsible and wanted a child so badly, they would pay for one. What do we do about the people who are poor, irresponsible and don't want their kids? What happens when your pro-liberty and utilitarian beliefs are in conflict?
I'm unclear, what does one have to do with the other? Are you trying to argue that if we banned surrogacy, more people would adopt already-born children? If so, I'm a bit doubtful.
This is a sloppy article and dismisses principled objections as icky and trad con religious types and crazy feminists. Typical autistic man child comments. Lazy.
Also weak sauce on not baking and engaging with Mary Harrington.
Well said. I think surrogacy is something that feels sort of new and scary to some people, particularly the trad religious crowd. But it is such a net positive that I think it will just become more mainstream over time.
It’s the same impulse as being against organ markets. In this case you are renting instead of buying an organ. People find it icky, and then use shitty arguments to rationalize their gut feeling.
Just curious: why is it also not as simple as your finding the 'restriction' of the interaction or agency 'icky' and then rationalizing some ideas like "free market" and "bodily autonomy" in response?
Often the disgust impulse steers us right. This is not one of those cases.
We'll see whose disgust wins out!
My point being that a human cannot escape human emotions, and the restriction of some free exchange in the name of autonomy is triggering disgust in you.
Many US states allow surrogacy contracts to include forced-abortion clauses. As in, the purchasers can demand that the child be killed, even if the surrogate mother disagrees. An Internet search will turn up many examples.
If abortion and surrogacy were truly about "empowering women" to "control their own bodies," this would of course be grossly illegal, anyone who tried to force a woman to kill the child in her womb would face a lengthy jail sentence. But they don't, because it's not about that at all.
Enforcing contracts is basically what individual liberty means. You might have other values, but that’s not inconsistent at all.
What contract did the baby sign?
Yeah you’re bringing in a different value now, which is an unborn child has liberty rights, which I don’t agree with.
Some of these cases involve born children outside the womb: the woman is obligated to give birth prematurely, and then the contract forbids doctors from providing lifesaving care.
Enforcing contracts is just a small, if important, part of individual liberty. And there is no way forcing a woman to abort a surrogate baby is consistent with the "woman's body" justification of prohibiting bans on abortion. Just like you can say if you don't want a forced abortion, don't sign a contract for it, you can say if you don't want to have a baby, don't get pregnant (provided there is an exception allowing abortion after a rape).
Not saying you can't be intellectually consistent and want to allow forced abortion of surrogacy babies and also prohibit laws against abortion, but the justification for prohibiting laws against abortion can't be the "woman's body" justification.
That is certainly an important moral area, but I doubt that there are a lot of cases where the birth parents want the child aborted and the surrogate decides they want to keep it instead.
If the government banned such clauses from contracts would you then have no problem with surrogacy? Sometimes people make a logical sounding edge-case argument to hide the fact that their ultimate belief isn't logical at all.
I would still feel uncomfortable with it, but not enough to strongly advocate for banning it (by which I mean make the contracts unenforceable, we definitely should not restrict it further than that).
My current, weakly-held view (which has shifted slightly from when I wrote OP) is that we need to experiment. Different countries and states should try different surrogacy laws according to their own values; it will take decades, perhaps even centuries, before we have a full picture of the effects and unintended consequences. (We still haven’t figured out the full implications of contraception! These are fundamental changes to the most important aspect of human life)
From the comments I wonder if Hanania isn't just trolling his regular readers to increase his creds with normies. :)
The thought had occurred to me, but I'm sure he could make more money without the normies than with them. Plus this fits with all his other libertarian beliefs.