Editorial August 17, 1987 Issue

Can the marketplace determine life's real value?

William E. Moody

Babies by contract. Surrogate motherhood. Legal arguments. Court verdicts. Angry words and heartbreak. Over the past year the Baby M. case in the United States has drawn widespread attention from the media. News reports have graphically depicted the personal struggles of the families involved in this emotionally charged custody battle. But beyond the families' struggles, society too has been forced to confront some extremely difficult questions of its own. And the way these questions are answered (or perhaps left unanswered) will certainly have a significant impact on the shape of our society in the coming decades.

Several months ago Time magazine carried an essay that pointed out a number of challenging issues raised by the Baby M. case. The essay's title was itself a haunting question. Beneath a three-column picture of the infant peering out from beneath the hood of her jacket, the title asked, "Whose Child Is This?"

The essay then observed: "The second half of the 20th century has been full of uneasy trade-offs and Faustian bargains. One after another, life's most intimate and privileged matters —sexual relations, conception, birth and death—have been delivered to the unsanctified ground of science and commerce. ... But even as the gains are counted, the reservations mount. Even when the mind assents, the heart sometimes shivers."^{Richard Lacayo, Time, January 19, 1987, p. 56 .}

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