Between Market And Morality: The Case Of Surrogacy

In What Money Can’t Buy and Justice – What’s the Right Thing to Do Michael Sandel argued that nowadays we face the loss of our collective moral compass caused by the increasing role of markets in our lives. In his view, when market and moral values compete, some aspects of everyday life become corrupted. One of the author’s examples is the case of surrogacy, presented as a service which corrupts parenthood. In this article we follow Sandel’s argument and argue, step by step, that its logic cannot be fully applied to surrogacy and, there where it can, it is utterly wrong. That is because in fact Sandel’s argumentation is not strictly economic but personalistic, as we demonstrate in the article. Our conclusion is that Sandel’s personalistic approach to surrogacy cannot be generalized over all cases and cultures, and even where it is used, it is offending and discriminating against both women who want to be surrogates and the intended parents.