On Sun, 8 Jan 2006, Doug Henwood wrote:
> Question on my mind for obvious reasons: why not children? By Becker logic
> shouldn't there be a market in kids?
Well there is, actually
http://www.surromomsonline.com/
check out the classifieds to find out how much a baby is going for. It's often very itemized. There is also a discussion forum. (Abbreviations: "SM" means "surrogate mother" and "IP" means "intended parents." Gestational Surrogates (GS) mothers are implanted with kids they have no genetic connection to. Traditional Surrogate (TS) mothers use their own eggs (aka AI mothers for artificially inseminated).
This is not exactly the same as selling a baby after it's born, but it makes sense that this should be how the market developed, since having the baby you buy be related to you makes it a much more valuable product to most of today's buyers.
And the market does deal with the adverse selection problem. IPs are very concerned with the mothers health, there is a fair amount of negotiation and background checking, and SMs are not among the poorest of the poor.
Also, fwiw, judging from their discussion forums, as far as their conscious motivations are concerned, SMs overwhelming do not think of themselves as primarily doing it for money. Their shared conscious self image is overwhelmingly that they are making sacrifices to help others, namely the poor IPs who can't have a child.
Michael