Selling Dreams In Ellen Goodman's 'Womb For Rent'

Why the law is contradictory and ineffective when it comes to overseas surrogacy- Altruistic surrogacy is diversely regulated by the states and territories, raising the issue of the interaction of those laws in international cases. Commercial surrogacy is prohibited in Australia, but is permitted in other countries. An increasing number of Australians exploit this difference by entering into commercial surrogacy agreements overseas, raising the question of the effect of such agreements in Australia. Suggesting that the well-meaning regulation of altruistic surrogacy and criminalisation of commercial surrogacy within Australia is likely to be ineffective in cross-border situations. Accordingly, suggests to reform the Australian law and endorses

I read an article that was published on The Hasting Center Journal, called “The Case Against Surrogate Parenting”, by Herbert Krimmel, Krimmel takes a stand against surrogate motherhood arrangements because of the many ethical issues it causes, he argues surrogate motherhood, is a financial profit, there can be conflicts during the process, and is designed to separate in the mind of the surrogate mother. First, Krimmel argues that the reason a woman often or always undertakes the pregnancy is because of the money motive. He states, “The cause of this dissociation is some other benefit she will receive, most often money.' In other words, her desire to create a child is born of some motive other than the desire to be a parent. This separation

The first argument that Anderson proposes is that commercial surrogacy turns women’s labor, that is, bearing and giving birth to the child, into alienated labor. She equates commercial surrogacy to subcontracting work in manufacturing industries, making this parallel because the surrogate is expected to treat her child like a final product with which she is expected to have no emotional bond with. Anderson argues that one can expect the surrogates to develop an emotional bond with the child regardless of the terms of the contract. Moreover, treating the pregnancy like another form of commercial production violates the “precious emotional

Purdy defends surrogate mothering from a consequentialist point of view. Her case is founded on two premises: firstly, that surrogacy is favourable (that is, it brings about pleasure and reduces pain), and secondly, that the practice is only non-traditional and not morally reprehensible. She thus concludes that "appealing to the sacrosanctity of traditional marriage or of blood ties to prohibit otherwise acceptable practices that would satisfy people 's desires hardly makes sense", and thus, surrogacy should be permissible (Purdy, 1999).

Abigail Goodman, a forty one year old mother and professor at Hilden University, finds herself pregnant for a third time. She believes that abortion is the best option for her case so she decides to terminate one of her own. A few weeks later, She goes on trial and although abortion is legal, she finds herself fighting. Abigail is arrested and is held under a law that makes abortion an offense. In the trial that follows she finds herself fighting for her right to abortion. The book addresses that Abigail goodman was “accused of murder”(Fast 1) for slaughtering her own baby and in many real cases we can seen as the same. Many times, the pro choice army has argued that abortion is murder or slaughter evidently supported by the fact that there are brain waves at 3 weeks and that life does begin at conception. (Source 5) the supporters of life Abigail was found in violation of sections 156 and 157 (Fast 8) which resulted in her arrest. Many may argue that “Women are denied rights that are given to men” (Fast 58) but this is not true. However, the act of abortion is taught as a movement against the feminist revolution with deep economic roots, demonstrating a reason for the major support of the practice (Fast 57). Abigail continues to argue that if men were capable of conception, there would be no argument of choice. There no privacy. (Fast

In modern society, it is difficult to imagine the amount of pain women go through when losing their child to adoption. However, when women's children are put into the adoption system, they have complete control of the situation. Shortly after World War II, the pregnancy rate in young women increased a dramatic amount. Different from mothers today, these young girls were not given the choice to keep their child nor did they have much say in the adoption process. In Ann Fesslers’ book The Girls Who Went Away, pathos, logos, and ethos were used to show the lack of control young pregnant women had in the 1960s.

Roughly half of the pregnancies each year in the United States are unplanned and twenty percent of those are terminated. For years the various religious and anti-abortion organizations protested abortion due to the unsafe procedures that could result in maternal death. Once proven that abortions were not more harmful than childbirth, those same organizations started protesting abortions for the safety of the fetus (Barry, 2012). The court case, Roe v. Wade, made all types of abortions: elective and therapeutic legal, and also ruled that the father’s rights do not need to be discussed if an abortion were to occur (Purvis, 2015). This case is continually debated in social and educational instances, but when one learns which rights abortion is under, it shows that abortion is a fundamental right (McBride, 2016). By ruling that the father’s rights should not be mentioned, this was the start of men’s voices being

The author describes various interactions between mothers and the medical system, in which the discussion crosses normal physician/patient boundaries (Frederick 2016). This is seen as acceptable because we have been deeply ingrained with the fear of disability and abnormality, that it has become acceptable to chastise individuals for “bringing a burden” on to society. There are distinct similarities between Scientific Motherhood and Fat-Talk Nation, in that both writings delineate how strongly we react to individuals who differ from our standard of normal, and how we openly accept and encourage abuse directed at them when they do deviate from our “normal” (Frederick 2016; . Frederick describes various instances in which mothers were subtly (or not so subtly) encouraged to seek abortions or sterilization (Frederick 2016). These exchanges are similar to those in the film No Mas Bebes were Mexican-American women were seen as a “threat” to the “normal” U.S. life during the 1960s and 1970s, and were thus forcibly sterilized without consent (Espino 2015). These examples show how these groups are being targeted as bad biocitizens. They are seen as being purposely bringing a burden to society, which allows for their

In the discussion of the legality of abortion, there are many points mentioned about the morality surrounding the situation, such as religion, morals, physical health, and even economics. Although both cases in the defense and support of abortion were compelling, Wendy Davis made the more convincing argument. Davis was most persuasive because she mentions the abuse of power as a corrupt way of trying to control women’s health and the disruption of trust in the doctor-patient relationship. Yet, she fails to acknowledge more details surrounding abortion, special cases and common ground, which could have made her argument more appealing to the opposing side of the bill.

I could smell the strong fruity scent of the middle-aged woman’s perfume as a slight breeze pasted through the shrubbery on the sidewalk. I could see her slender silhouette walking my way and a small glitter of hope in her eyes. She asked if they could talk to me for a minute I smiled and told her that’s exactly what I had in mind. I informed both the man and woman that I was there to actually observe and interview abortion protesters. I did not fully understand if they were making a change and wanted a firsthand experience. They agreed to help me in any way they could.

In the context of classical Marxism, the moral permissibility of surrogate motherhood is forcefully negated. Marxism condemns the practice of surrogacy as an exemplification of commodity fetishism in capitalist society, viewing surrogacy arrangements as a commercialization of the female womb. The term, “commodification of the womb,” thus arises to describe the process by which services carried out by the female womb are sold and purchased on the market. Through such transactions, the surrogate’s body and the infant it produces are transformed from subjects to objects that have both exchange value and use value in their commodified state.

Laws are legislated and enforced for the mere purpose of protecting all individuals in a society by stating what is and what is not acceptable behavior. Though it is impossible for these legislative decisions to please every single individual in a society, these governs are passed in morality of the thousands of elected parties in charge. Commercial surrogacy is a current complex issue that evokes strong moralistic response. Commercial surrogacy takes away the childbearing element in the reproductive period for individuals looking to have or extend a family. It has opened the doors for many who cannot bear children of their own though this behavior has also raised many concerns about the appropriate scope of the market. This “method for acquiring children” is more commonly objected because the children and women’s reproductive ability are being treated as a commodity. Summed up through Elizabeth S. Anderson’s article, “Is Women’s Labor a Commodity?” children are buyer durables and women are baby factories (Anderson 82). Anderson communicates commercial surrogacy children as commodities stating how this “market” that these children are born into expresses attitude that endorses market norms as opposed to ‘norms of parental love”(Anderson 76). Anderson focuses her paper towards the manipulation, alienation, and exploitation of women that commodifies women’s reproductive capacities. Through Anderson’s argument and her perceptive relations of this market to alienation,

A more daring form of regulation could consider some sort of familial structure that enables interested families to involve assisting women in the child’s life in some way (e.g., visiting rights, non-anonymous gamete donation, who are willing to provide the child and the recipients identified information, ). Duties and entitlements of assisting women should be relative to their contribution, not equivalent to those of intended parents, who will be the child’s raising parents and should be assigned with traditional rights and obligations. Many intended parents may see such an arrangement as a deal breaker. From a market point of view, seeing gametes and surrogacy services as market commodities implies that assisting women are suppliers of a

In today’s society, surrogacy is becoming a more and more popular and common issue. For many couples who cannot or unwilling to carry babies by themselves, surrogacy is the first choice to have their own babies and build a family. The legality of surrogacy is different for every country. There are countries that consider the birth mother as the legal mother while there are those that don't. Besides, a lower price of surrogacy in developing countries drives them to find surrogate mother overseas. Thus, international

Some view altruistic surrogacy as a form of exploiting the surrogate. There is no monetary compensation to woman placing her health and well-being on the line for another’s benefit. However, it can also be held that the woman knowingly entered into the agreement with full disclosure of the risks and benefits to her health and body. Again, autonomy and justice are extremely prevalent ethical principles to explore when discussing the topic of surrogacy. Same-sex marriage has become a hot topic in the United States in the last few years. The idea of raising a family by homosexual