Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Religion & Law Blogs -> Constitutionally Correct

Religion & Law

: Constitutionally Correct

Altruism and Intermediation in the Market for Babies

By Alliance Alert

Washington and Lee Law Review: "However, the supposed and much-discussed baby selling ban does not, and is not intended to, eliminate commercial transactions in children. Instead, it is an asymmetric legal restriction that limits the ability of baby market suppliers to share in the full profits generated by their reproductive labor, insisting instead that they derive a large portion of their compensation from the utility associated with altruistic donation. Meanwhile, a wide range of baby market intermediaries profit handsomely in the baby market, without similar restrictions on their market activities. Baby selling ?bans? thus have more in common with the rent seeking by powerful marketplace actors seen in other commercial markets than with normative statements about the sanctity of human life. The author concludes with a call for the removal of the last vestiges of the ban against baby selling and other laws that diminish the capacity of baby market suppliers to access the marketplace."

Full post as published by Constitutionally Correct on May 11, 2009 (boomark / email).