AN ARGUMENT FOR SURROGACY
P1. A woman should be free to use her womb how she wishes
P2. Being a surrogate is using a womb how the woman wishes
C. Therefore a woman should be free to be a surrogate
CONSERVATIVE COMMENTARY
Rights do not act in isolation and must always be understood in their relation to other and competing rights. David Blankenhorn said:
A basic problem when we use the language of human rights is the tendency and the temptation to treat each specific right as if it stands alone, in splendid isolation and reigning in absolute mastery, conveniently disconnected from other rights that may conflict with it – and also disconnected from any overarching anthropology or system of values that alone permit us to adjudicate rights in conflict and also to understand rights in relationship to duties, obligations, and other human goods that cannot easily be expressed in terms of rights. The obvious danger in this take-your-pick, cafeteria-style, essentially de-contextualized approach to human rights is that each right, in its isolated supremacy, tends to get expressed in absolutist, totalizing terms.
David Blankenhorn. 2005. The Rights of Children and the Redefinition of Parenthood. [ONLINE] Available at: http://americanvalues.org/catalog/pdfs/family-humanrights.pdf. [Accessed 21 April 2019].
A right exists only in community with, and at times in tension with, other rights.
Therefore the claim in P1 that a woman should be free to use her womb how she wishes must consider competing rights such as the right’s of the child.