Thursday, September 8, 2011

The Pregnancy Market

     Although Ellen Goodman believes that the use of surrogate mother is in some cases very beneficial to couples, she also says that there should be "something uncomfortable about a free market approach to baby-making." This is because she believes the rich are taking advantage of the monetary needs of the poor. Goodman's appeal to the audience (pathos) is that we are essentially crossing ethical boundaries and overuse the surrogate process--we are distorting natural processes and making baby making into a business, a marketplace. The fact that she includes that women in Anand make $25 a month crushing glass, and are forced to endure surrogacy makes the projected audience feel uneasy about the process. 
     Something that make's Goodman's argument particularly effective is that she takes the argument from a more casual perspective and also acknowledges why surrogate mothers could be a good thing. If she instead rambled on about how much she despised the process, the audience of the article would not be as open to what she had to say. She points out what is going on, and suggests why this may be problematic. 
     Something that really struck me in this article was when she included the part about women from Anand. When you think of it in the sense that these mothers from Anand rely on having somebody else's child to make a living--you become really sympathetic. I therefore went from being indifferent to the article to really being disturbed by the issue.

1 comment:

  1. I have to agree with you, that Goodman made a good choice by staying neutral through her paper. By not directly voicing her opinion, and trying to force it on her audience, she let them kind of choose what she meant by her paper.

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