Various authors, for instance Elizabeth Anderson, Rosemary Tong, Mary Warnock and Margaret Brazier have argued that commercial surrogate motherhood is exploitative and that it should be prohibited. Their arguments are unconvincing. Exploitation is a more complex notion than it is usually presented as being. Unequal bargaining power can be a cause of exploitation but the exercise of unequal bargaining power is not inevitably or inherently exploitative. Exploitation concerns unfair and/or unjust strategies - rather than the exercise of power as such. (...) Commercial surrogate motherhood is not necessarily exploitative. Furthermore, not all transactions which are exploitative should be made illegal. (shrink)

Le Grand describes a situation where a drunk driver, who has medical insurance, is the cause of an accident in which he and a sober pedestrian, who has no medical insurance, are both equally and seriously injured. At the private hospital to which they are both taken, there is available emergency treatment for one of them only. Who should receive it? The issues raised by Le Grand's example are shown to be more interesting, more complex and less clearcut than Le (...) Grand suggests and implies. In particular, it is not the case that, unequivocally, the drunkenness of the driver establishes that the pedestrian rather than he should be treated nor that, unequivocally, the driver's possession of health insurance is morally irrelevant. (shrink)

In this paper we investigate the legal arrangements involved in UK surrogate motherhood from a transaction-cost perspective. We outline the specific forms the transaction costs take and critically comment on the way in which the UK institutional and organisational arrangements at present adversely influence transaction costs. We then focus specifically on the potential role of surrogacy agencies and look at UK and US evidence on commercial and voluntary agencies. Policy implications follow.

It is argued by Anderson and also in the BrazierReport that Commercial Surrogate Motherhood (C.S.M.)contracts and agencies should be illegal on thegrounds that C.S.M. involves the commodification ofboth mothers and babies. This paper takes issue withthis view and argues that C.S.M. is not inconsistentwith the proper respect for, and treatment of,children and women. A case for the legalisation ofC.S.M. is made.

In a recent article in Health Care Analysis (Vol. 8, No. 1),Campbell misrepresents our specific arguments about commercialsurrogate motherhood (C.S.M.) and our general philosophical andpolitical views by saying or suggesting that we are `Millsian'liberals and consequentialists. He gives too the false impressionthat we do not oppose, in principle, slavery and child purchase.Here our position on C.S.M. is re-expressed and elaborated uponin order to eliminate possible confusion. Our general ethical andphilosophical framework is also outlined and shown to be otherthan Campbell says (...) that it is. In particular, a moral philosophythat it is based on neither consequentialism nor Kantianism ispresented. C.S.M., it is argued, is not child purchase. It is like it insome respects and unlike it in others. It is unlike it in therespects which, relative to the present discussion, matter. (shrink)