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From: falk@peregrine.Eng.Sun.COM (Ed Falk)
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Subject: Re: Can we sell our bodies and our rights?
Message-ID: <1777@exodus.Eng.Sun.COM>
Date: 29 Oct 90 17:10:17 GMT
References: <9010261655.AA05142@cobalt.cco.caltech.edu>
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In article <9010261655.AA05142@cobalt.cco.caltech.edu> morphy@cobalt.cco.caltech.EDU (Jones Maxime Murphy) writes:
>
>	[You can't sell your freedom, i.e. you can't contract to be a slave]
>
>I feel that the same approach to maternal rights must be taken. The
>idea that a woman can be treated purely as gestational equipment has a
>long and dishonourable history. I simply do not agree that surrogacy
>contracts should be enforceable. We already have laws which render
>void the offering of children for adoption for financial gain. We
>should immediately extend such laws to surrogacy to prevent the kinds
>of chaos we are seeing now.

Ok, so who was the mother in the Anna Johnson vs. the Calverts case?
Anna Johnson, who gave birth to the baby, or Crispina Calvert who
conceived it with her husband?

Currently, men have the legal right to be sperm donors, even for
money.  They sign away all rights to any child that might result.

Is there something so magical about reproduction that women cannot be
considered competent to sign similar contracts?  Is the maternal
instinct so strong that women literally don't know their own minds
when reproduction is concerned?

Anyone over 21 is competent to sign a contract to buy a car or
something.  Noone is competent to sign themselves into slavery.  Are
there some things which men are competent to contract, but not women?

		-ed falk, sun microsystems
		 sun!falk, falk@sun.com
		 card-carrying ACLU member.