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Surrogate Mother Told to Abort Female Triplet!

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  • #76
    Originally posted by Joel View Post
    From the article:
    "commodification is about unsalable things becoming salable."
    And says it's a Marxist concept, in which normal employment is commodification.
    The complaint (of those complaining about commodification) is that something is for sale that ought not be for sale.

    So... it entails that the thing is being bought/sold. Which, as I was saying, is not an essential property of surrogacy, so it is not an objection to the act itself. Unless you mean something else by "commodification"?
    I think you picked out a small piece of that link to harp on while ignoring the broader concepts discussed throughout it.

    Using that same link:

    "The Marxist understanding of commodity is distinct from the meaning of commodity in mainstream business theory. One way to summarize the difference is that commoditization is about proprietary things becoming generic, whereas commodification is about unsalable things becoming salable."

    and

    "The terms commodification and commoditization are sometimes used synonymously,[7] particularly in the sense of this article, to describe the process of making commodities out of anything that was not used to be available for trade previously; compare anthropology usage.[8][9]

    However, other authors distinguish them (as done in this article), with commodification used in social contexts to mean that a non-commercial good has become commercial, typically with connotations of "corrupted by commerce", while commoditization is used in business contexts to mean when the market for an existing product has become a commodity market, where products are interchangeable and there is heavy price competition. In a quip: "Microprocessors are commoditized. Love is commodified."


    It's a multi-faceted issue. The ultimate point isn't that hard to understand, in my opinion. We could say that I wish to preserve the sanctity of childbirth if you want something esoteric sounding, but the root effect is the same. You're taking something that is and should be relatively unique and turning it into something that anyone anywhere can have done for whatever reason they choose. Celebrities want kids without sacrificing their bodies, so they have someone else do it for them. People want to wait until their late 30s or early 40s to have kids and still have a way to bypass natural fertility problems. Infertile partnerships (including same-sex relationships) by definition aren't capable of reproduction, but people aren't about to let that stop them. They want it so they will find a way to do it. I don't think that's an ok practice for anything, let alone childbirth.

    So yes, it's turning childbirth into a commodity, something that people can have done for any number of reasons with relatively little effort. It's turning a child from an unsalable good to a salable one, and the nature of the exchange is rather irrelevant.


    To be honest, I'd like to see you actually defend the concept of surrogacy rather than ask a bunch of "what if" questions in an attempt to prove people aren't really against it. That may not be your intent, but that's how it reads to me.
    I'm not here anymore.

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    • #77
      Originally posted by Carrikature View Post
      They're welcome to believe whatever they want, but it's still crazy to think that Joseph and Mary never had sex at any point. Even as a Christian, I was never a fan of making up junk to make things even more mystical.
      I'm not a fan of "making up junk" either. It's a very early tradition.
      Enter the Church and wash away your sins. For here there is a hospital and not a court of law. Do not be ashamed to enter the Church; be ashamed when you sin, but not when you repent. – St. John Chrysostom

      Veritas vos Liberabit<>< Learn Greek <>< Look here for an Orthodox Church in America<><Ancient Faith Radio
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      I recommend you do not try too hard and ...research as little as possible. Such weighty things give me a headache. - Shunyadragon, Baha'i apologist

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      • #78
        Originally posted by Carrikature View Post
        From the article:
        "commodification is about unsalable things becoming salable."
        And says it's a Marxist concept, in which normal employment is commodification.
        The complaint (of those complaining about commodification) is that something is for sale that ought not be for sale.

        So... it entails that the thing is being bought/sold. Which, as I was saying, is not an essential property of surrogacy, so it is not an objection to the act itself. Unless you mean something else by "commodification"?
        I think you picked out a small piece of that link to harp on while ignoring the broader concepts discussed throughout it.

        Using that same link:

        "The Marxist understanding of commodity is distinct from the meaning of commodity in mainstream business theory. One way to summarize the difference is that commoditization is about proprietary things becoming generic, whereas commodification is about unsalable things becoming salable."

        and

        "The terms commodification and commoditization are sometimes used synonymously,[7] particularly in the sense of this article, to describe the process of making commodities out of anything that was not used to be available for trade previously; compare anthropology usage.[8][9]

        However, other authors distinguish them (as done in this article), with commodification used in social contexts to mean that a non-commercial good has become commercial, typically with connotations of "corrupted by commerce", while commoditization is used in business contexts to mean when the market for an existing product has become a commodity market, where products are interchangeable and there is heavy price competition. In a quip: "Microprocessors are commoditized. Love is commodified."
        What I said seems to be a good summary of the whole, which your quotes here support. You referred to "commodification" and linked to this article that makes a distinction between "commodification" and "commoditization", so it was apparent that you were referring to that which the article classifies as "commodification". Which is, in your quotes here, "unsalable things becoming salable" and "non-commercial good has become commercial". Which is what I said.

        And of course someone who thinks commodification (of something) is bad thinks that the thing is "corrupted by commerce". The person probably thinks that commerce in general "corrupts" things.

        So I'm not seeing how my summary is a bad one.

        It's a multi-faceted issue. The ultimate point isn't that hard to understand, in my opinion. We could say that I wish to preserve the sanctity of childbirth if you want something esoteric sounding, but the root effect is the same. You're taking something that is and should be relatively unique and turning it into something that anyone anywhere can have done for whatever reason they choose. Celebrities want kids without sacrificing their bodies, so they have someone else do it for them. People want to wait until their late 30s or early 40s to have kids and still have a way to bypass natural fertility problems. Infertile partnerships (including same-sex relationships) by definition aren't capable of reproduction, but people aren't about to let that stop them. They want it so they will find a way to do it. I don't think that's an ok practice for anything, let alone childbirth.

        So yes, it's turning childbirth into a commodity, something that people can have done for any number of reasons with relatively little effort. It's turning a child from an unsalable good to a salable one, and the nature of the exchange is rather irrelevant.
        In some of your comments it almost seems like you are prejudiced against disabled people. Suggesting that if someone can't do something like a normal person can, then it's wrong for them to have or achieve the same fruits. If they don't have normally functioning legs, then it's not ok for them to walk (or to help them walk), say using prosthetics. After all you said, "I don't think that's an ok practice for anything." That's really awful-sounding to me.

        And fertility in a couple is a spectrum, not an all-or-nothing thing as you suggest. There are a variety of possible difficulties, some simpler than others to overcome, and some impossible with current technology.

        Your comments about people's motivations for convenience can apply just as well to adoption. But surely that doesn't make all adoption wrong. Just because some people do something with bad or imperfect motivations doesn't imply that the act itself is wrong.

        You say "the nature of the exchange is rather irrelevant", but I was talking about the difference between exchange and not-exchange (i.e. free gift).

        Your overall gist seems to be complaining that it's taking something that is supposed to be special and making it common/insignificant. But as far as my experience, people who have children via surrogate consider it a very special/intimate/sacred thing. The most important thing in their life, just like normal parents. And it seems unlikely to make procreation more frequent than for normal parents. It seems unlikely that a couple with fertility difficulties is going to have more offspring than they would have, had they been physically normal. The exception would be cases like your celebrity example where someone might procreate when they would not have at all otherwise. But I still doubt that makes having a child less special to the parents. If it does, it seems it would either be an argument that works equally against adoption, and/or goes back to the wrong-motivations objection.

        To be honest, I'd like to see you actually defend the concept of surrogacy rather than ask a bunch of "what if" questions in an attempt to prove people aren't really against it. That may not be your intent, but that's how it reads to me.
        To defend it could be to defend it as a positive good, or as merely not-bad.
        A positive argument that something is not-bad seems difficult in general. If I don't see it as bad, then it usually seems best to me to ask questions to try to understand why others think it is bad. And then to put that reasoning to the test. Which is what I've been trying to do.

        Perhaps the way to positively argue something X as not-bad would be to exhaustively list all wrongs (or all categories of wrongs) and see that X is not any of them. I'm not sure of an exhaustive list, but for major things: surrogacy can be done without injuring others (i.e. being unjust); without being intemperate or cowardly; it can be done apart from bad motives such as vanity, envy, avarice, sloth, gluttony, or lust. It can be done with love. It does not seem to violate any Scriptural command.

        What else? The argument here seems to be that it's a wrongful corrupting of something higher by mixing/tainting it with things lower (in this case, artificial means). But then I'd think the burden of proof would be on the one saying that.


        Beyond that, can it be thought or argued that surrogacy can be a positive good? Well we noted earlier that in at least special cases (saving the life of a baby) it seems unambiguously a good. And in the cases of a husband and wife with fertility difficulties, it seems to be a good similar to how prosthetic legs can improve someone's ability to function, or technology can in some cases give hearing to a deaf person. I know married couples whose lives have been greatly blessed by surrogacy, and gained a close, lifetime bond with their surrogate. It appears to have been a wonderful good for them, and a harm to no one.

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