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jumpingjacksplash's avatar

The Seven Stars has changed - it’s behind the High Court, and sets aside a table for judges.

So far as surrogacy goes, the concern the regulations/bans go to is couples who don’t need it using it for convenience. The idea is that people (in reality, and relevant to the counter-argument, women) shouldn’t be able to shift certain burdens onto others; there should be a limit to what money can buy. The underlying moral desiderata are solidarity (ensuring everyone has broadly equivalent lives, thereby fostering mutual sympathy, allowing society to better cohere and reducing the gulf between classes), egalitarianism and justice (in the Hellenic sense; the price for having a child is a pregnancy, and trying not to pay the price incurs a moral debt).

There’s another line of argument that it allows the sale of children (less coherent with implanted embryos, but “surrogacy” gets used more broadly than that) and separates them from their birth mother, but I don’t think these survive a sufficiently precise and robust regulatory framework.

These arguments wouldn’t appeal to a utilitarian or libertarian, but most people are neither.

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Matt Ball's avatar

>I have read a number of articles by women who had followed it and were now unhappy at the results

Anecdata!

(Seriously - writing those kinds of articles get attention; editors aren't going to run articles saying "Sisters, I'm promiscuous and loving it!")

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