by Alana S. Newman within Bioethics November 10th, 2014
The Witherspoon Institute
If it’s okay to buy and sell sperm, eggs, and wombs, then why is it not okay to sell other human tissues or organs? If it’s okay to sell one’s reproductive parts, why is it not okay to sell one’s sexual parts, as in prostitution? If it’s okay to pre-sell and pre-order children via third-party reproduction, what is so wrong with buying and selling children who are already born or conceived?
“Then how are gay people supposed to get kids?” asked a young woman from the audience. I had just given a presentation criticizing donor-conception to 150 students at CSU-Northridge at the inaugural Bonds That Matter conference held by The International Children’s Rights Institute. I thought I had done a sufficient job of explaining that commodification of children and gamete donors dehumanizes people into objects, property, chattel.
“But listen to yourself,” I responded. “You just asked, ‘how are they supposed toget kids?’”
Apparently, for my questioner, the idea of some people possessing others seemed neither frightful nor relevant.
I’d like to summarize my presentation here and reflect on what caused a small number of students to revolt after the conference—going so far as to harass its creator, Bobby Lopez.
Are All Technologies Good?
I remember the first time I struggled to understand the ethics of a case involving reproductive technologies. I was five years old, folding clothes in my bedroom with my mom. She told me that my dad was not my biological father. My biological father was an anonymous sperm donor, whom we didn’t know anything about.
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