Shopping Around the Baby Market

Arts & Ideas

BBC

Society & Culture

4.2 • 599 Ratings

🗓️ 4 April 2019

⏱️ 19 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Commercial surrogacy – the practice of paying another woman to carry a pregnancy to term – has been criticised for being exploitative, particularly when poorer women are recruited. Even if these women were paid more, and the exploitation element were reduced, would unease remain about “renting out” your body in this way? This essay from New Generation Thinker Gulzaar Barn will explore what, if anything, is different about the buying and selling of bodily services from other forms of trade. Should the body should be taken off the market ?

Gulzaar Barn taught philosophy at the University of Birmingham and is now researching at King’s College, London in the Dickson Poon School of Law. The Essay was recorded at the Free Thinking Festival at Sage Gateshead.

New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select 10 academics each year who can turn their research into radio.

Producer: Zahid Warley

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome back to the home of the oxymoron. Evil genius. He asked the newspaper to print his obituary early so he'd enjoy it. That's like hiding at your own funeral. Yeah, a big, great gig. I'm Russell Kane. Join me to weigh in on whether the biggest players in history are more evil or genius. Becoming that rich, I'd say that is some level of genius. It also helps that it's a long time ago, right?
0:23.3	It's like the podcast version of telling your kids the ice cream van plays music when it's out of ice cream.
0:28.8	Listen to Evil Genius on BBC Sounds.
0:33.3	BBC Sounds, music, radio podcasts.
0:37.1	Hello, I'm Eleanor Rosamond Barakoff, and I'm delighted to be introducing this short talk
0:42.2	recorded at BBC Radio 3's Free Thinking Festival as a BBC Arts and Ideas podcast.
0:48.7	Gulzab Barn considers thorny philosophical problems.
0:52.3	She taught philosophy at the University of Birmingham, and she's now at King's College, London, where she's researching the ethical dimensions of punishment, health and work. She's a new generation thinker on the scheme. The BBC runs with the Arts and Humanities Research Council to make radio programs from academic research.
1:13.0	And her short talk today is called Shopping Around the Baby Market.
1:24.1	Are you sitting comfortably?
1:26.6	Take a moment to feel the sensations in your body.
1:30.7	Feel the weight in your legs.
1:32.6	Perhaps they're worn out after a day of rushing around.
1:36.0	Take some time to dwell on that pain in your shoulder
1:38.4	that developed after sleeping strangely the other night.
1:42.4	Let these sensations wash over you. We have a uniquely intimate
1:46.6	connection with our own bodies. These sensations are ours and ours alone. Any trespass,
1:53.7	especially one that's invasive, is viewed with suspicion and fear. Our body is seen as belonging
2:00.4	to us and us alone. but what exactly does this mean?
2:05.4	If our bodies belong to us, does that mean we're free to do whatever we want with them,
2:10.7	including selling certain dispensable parts of them to the highest bidder? It would seem that
2:16.5	some jobs require just that.
	...

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