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The Free Market In Sandel's Pregnancy For Pay

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The free market is the center of debate of whether it’s fair or not to buy certain goods like babies. Sandel’s “Pregnancy for Pay” talks about a couple, William and Elizabeth Stern. They wanted a baby but couldn’t have one so they worked up a contract with Mary Beth, that said that they would pay her $10,000 dollars to have a surrogate pregnancy using William’s sperm, which makes William, the baby’s father. She would have also had to give up her maternal rights. In the end, Mary formed a maternal bond with the child and refused to give the baby up. The libertarians who support the free market in this case will say that “letting people engage in voluntary exchanges respects their freedoms; laws that interfere with the free market violate individual …show more content…
Contracts are intended to be followed, just like how the first judge said. Like the libertarians, the utilitarian also supports the free market based on their notion that there can be a deal as long as both parties gain happiness and none are hurt. In the pregnancy case, both would have gained something. The Sterns could have had their daughter and Mary Beth her ten thousand dollars but the custody was given to Beth after an initial ruling was overturned. The first judge said “a deal is a deal” and “one did not force the other” (Sandel, page 92). Both are true because a contract was signed and Beth wasn’t forced to sign the contract. In the contrary, the second judge said that this was baby selling and the contract “…it was not truly voluntary” (Sandel, page 93) because Beth wasn’t informed that she might’ve bond with the baby and she was blinded by money. She already had two kids before, she should’ve known she would’ve come to love the baby after giving birth to two before. The judge also said that “There are, in a civilized society, some things that money cannot buy” (Sandel, page 94) because the selling of babies is degrading to the mother and to the child because by selling them, they are viewed as

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