Life, Liberty and Property

Selling kidneys is a popular topic of debate among the libertarian crowd. Alex Tabarrok over at Marginal Revolution recently noted that in Iran, not only is selling your kidneys legal, but they have eliminated any waiting lists for those transplants. Without getting into that debate at the moment, it seems from the evidence, that this market-transplant system saves lives by increasing the number of available (living-donor) organs for transplant.

So why can’t the market do other things for us?

For some of you, abortion isn’t a concern. For me, it is. I cannot tell you when “life” officially begins, but I’d rather not take a chance on ending one. Nonetheless, abortions are a fact of life. People will get them, and there really isn’t a good way to stop them from doing so.

The market, however, should be able to provide an incentive to give birth. Right now “selling” a baby, like selling an organ is illegal in most of the world. Now, I am not proposing that we allow parents to sell their children into slavery, just that they be allowed to receive compensation for the transfer of their parental rights over the child to new parents.

This would not likely be cheap, as the price of the adoption would likely be some combination of the mother’s expenses (medical costs, etc), compensation for the mother’s time and discomfort, and the number of babies currently available for adoption. Many prospective parents would purchase a child while it was still in the mother’s womb, allowing them to ensure a certain level of care on the part of the birth-mother. 

Since legally available/enforceable compensation would increase the number of mothers willing to carry a child to term, the waiting lists to adopt a baby would almost certainly be eliminated, as the market would provide a plentiful supply of babies.

Now let me anticipate the criticisms of this plan:

Won’t this encourage poor people to have babies? Yes. Very possibly, it would encourage poor women to give birth, rather than having an abortion. In the end, they will be compensated, eliminating much of the reason why women in that situation often opt for abortion.

Won’t people get pregnant just to make a profit? No doubt some women will try to turn their wombs into for-profit baby-factories. It is unlikely that this effect would become any more large-scale than attempting to make a career out of blood or sperm donations. Your productivity is limited by a the 9 month “turnover” time, as well as a reasonable period to recover.

Furthermore, the level of compensation would likely be affected by the lifestyle choices of the mother in question. Women would likely need to participate in some dangerous and indiscriminate sexual practices in order to maintain a constant state of pregnancy, which would likely decrease the amount a prospective parent would be willing to pay for a child.

Additionally, the law of supply and demand would seem to dictate that if too many mothers participated in this system, that the compensation being offered would move downward, possibly beyond a point that would make it attractive to a mother. So, while some would abuse the system, it isn’t likely to be widespread.

Isn’t it wrong to sell a baby? Is it? It certainly isn’t the utopic view of the universe. In a perfect world, women would only become pregnant when they were good and ready for it, and everyone would be a perfect parent, and we’d all live happily ever after. Since that isn’t the case, however, we need to make the system benefit the most people. 

This suggestion benefits the prospective parents (who can get a child essentially whenever they want one), it benefits the mother (who can be compensated for taking good care of herself and a fetus for 9 months), and it benefits the child (who gets to be born and raised by a loving family). Happy, loving families raising babies who would have otherwise been killed before they were born. Does that sound immoral to you?

Also, you aren’t really selling a baby in this scenario. The birth-mother is signing over the parental rights to her child to willing parents, and being compensated for the nine months when she was essentially then caring for another person’s child. Similar to how it is not immoral to pay a day care to look after your kids while you are at work.

Alright. Let the hate-mail flow.