Consent is Sacred—Unless We Don’t Like the Outcome

Wow I’m so shocked that a house built on sand has crashed

Recently, we learned that the patron saint of Nigerian feminists, Chimamanda, delivered twins. Everyone took it for granted that dear Chimamanda must have done the labor herself because why not? After all, she’s an African woman who would obviously not be into immoral and unethical practices like buying a womb. That’s something for women like Kim Kardashian, Georgina Rodriguez, and Paris Hilton. Our dear — what do we call her again? Odeluwa — would never do something so icky. Right?

It turns out everyone who thought like that was wrong. Chimamanda indeed bought a womb and had her babies through a surrogate. Unexpectedly, people who have formed a parasitic social relationship with this woman believed that the goings and comings of her family were actually their business, and they began quite an interesting ruckus over it. Some argued that surrogacy was inherently immoral, and others argued that people arguing that should shut their dirty faces. How many books have they written? What do they know? Please leave this woman alone, they cried.

My grouse is with the argument itself. You’d think the question of surrogacy would be a straightforward one, especially considering our new moral fashions. People may not believe this, but there is a sizable chunk of the Nigerian socio who are now taken in totally by the whims of consent-based morality. This chunk is likely to tell you that consent is the primary thing and is the main demarcation between good and evil.

The implication of this argument is that it immediately validates their own subjective moral ideologies. For example, if consent is the primary thing, good Christian sister Jesutofunmi can still support her gay male friend Kenneth while also praying for his soul. She can even protest, quite earnestly, against the criminalization of homosexuality, and she has good reason for it. After all, what’s the business of the state when two private people consent? But it doesn’t only end there. She can argue against chastity and indecency laws via the same logic. What’s the business of the government if I choose to wear a pretty miniskirt and a half-bra? What’s the business of the state if I choose to attend nightclubs and drink till the sun comes up? If one tells her that all religions in the country frown upon this behavior, she will sweetly inform you that the constitution says the country is secular actually. And she’s correct — on paper, the country is indeed secular. But we cannot do libertarianism halfway. If consent is the primary thing, then it has to be the primary thing all the way. I usually make this argument with a different subject, but the matter of surrogacy fits perfectly today.

Given this logic, which is ubiquitous and underlines the structure of today’s moral establishment, surrogacy cannot be unethical. If the surrogate consents, then it is completely and totally ethical. Not only is it ethical, but it should be encouraged as surrogacy brings joy to two people. The person carrying the baby gets paid for their reproductive labor — which, ironically, is the wet dream of many third-wave feminists. And the person receiving the baby gets to enjoy the joy of having a child when they previously couldn’t have one. In the world of capitalist cut-throat craziness, surrogacy is the one labor that brings satisfaction and joy to both parties.

Now, I’m not totally ignorant of the arguments against surrogacy. But I don’t see how they are relevant, as these arguments could be used for literally any other financial transaction. There are some who say that surrogacy is unethical because it preys on poor and disadvantaged women and forces them to rent their wombs out. However, surrogacy doesn’t prey on these women, it helps them. By getting paid for their labor, they can earn a reasonable income. The fact that they are earning this income through their bodies isn’t enough reason to make surrogacy unethical. After all, all labor is performed through the body. I understand that pregnancies are dangerous, but if we considered reproduction a job, it wouldn't even be in the top five most dangerous jobs in the world. Loggers, roofers, commercial fishers, aircraft pilots, and flight engineers all have significantly higher mortality rates. So the special pleading — that surrogacies are unethical because of the special dangers of pregnancies — doesn't pass the eye test. If higher mortality makes a job unethical, then we wouldn't have loggers, roofers, or commercial fishers.

There's also the argument that inequality makes the concept of choice and consent illusory. After all, what choice does a poor woman have when asked to sell her womb for money? You might not believe it, but she has the choice to wallow in poverty since that is what she should do anyway if she wasn't approached with the opportunity. This argument, which is mostly made by immature teenagers and ridiculous adults, is extraordinarily foolish. Poverty doesn't take away your choice. If it did, everyone who worked would be under indentured servitude since very few people really want to labor. We labor because we would like some money to enjoy our lives. That doesn't make our choice to engage in that labor illusory — it makes it practical and part of humdrum human experience. Do you think the person who packs your trash or builds your home wants to do it? Are you unethical for employing them to do that? Do you think they would do such jobs if they weren't poor? Aren't you taking advantage of their poverty?

And lastly, there's the argument that surrogacy involves the commodification of human life in a way that other labor doesn't. But I don't regard a surrogate as someone who carries a baby. I think she's carrying nothing but a clump of cells.

That's the nature of all arguments against the commercialization of surrogacy. They all place reproductive labor on a standing that isn't coherent with other modern feminist arguments. If reproductive labor is ordinary human happenstance that can be cut short by an elective abortion or deserves compensation (push gifts, anyone?), then that labor can and should be bought by less fortunate women. The point of third-wave feminism has been to remove the special status from reproductive labor — after making that normal, they cannot, in the same breath, restore that special status to make their arguments.

A common (but not really good) counterargument I've heard is that surrogacy is just like selling an organ. Since most countries outlaw organ purchase, it follows that they should outlaw surrogacy. But that argument is, first of all, a bad analogy. While pregnancies are dangerous, they aren't even a quarter as detrimental to one's life as selling an organ. One can carry a baby ten times, but organ donors usually have only one organ to donate. Even if we accept the premise of the analogy, it does nothing to refute the point as our consent-based moral framework also suggests that organ purchase should be legal but regulated — just like surrogacy should be. The fact that we have some incoherent laws doesn't mean we should make some more.

The only way to opt out of this moral conundrum, to me, is to adopt a moral framework that doesn't depend on consent but on objective moral rules. But that also means throwing away certain fashionable moral positions that might get one expelled from polite company. As far as I can tell, that is unlikely to happen for most people. The easy position, I'd say, is to accept that our consent-based moral framework may, at some time or the other, throw up uncomfortable moral conclusions such as this one. In any case, what is it to you what two consenting adults do behind a closed hospital door?