Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- PART ONE WHAT MAKES A MARKET? EFFICIENCY, ACCOUNTABILITY, AND RELIABILITY OR GETTING THE BABIES WE WANT
- 1 Baby Markets
- 2 The Upside of Baby Markets
- 3 Price and Pretense in the Baby Market
- 4 Bringing Feminist Fundamentalism to U.S. Baby Markets
- 5 Producing Kinship through the Marketplaces of Transnational Adoption
- PART TWO SPACE AND PLACE: REPRODUCING AND REFRAMING SOCIAL NORMS OF RACE, CLASS, GENDER, AND OTHERNESS
- PART THREE SPECTRUMS AND DISCOURSES: RIGHTS, REGULATIONS, AND CHOICE
- PART FOUR THE ETHICS OF BABY AND EMBRYO MARKETS
- PART FIVE TENUOUS GROUNDS AND BABY TABOOS
- Author Bios
- Index
- References
4 - Bringing Feminist Fundamentalism to U.S. Baby Markets
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- PART ONE WHAT MAKES A MARKET? EFFICIENCY, ACCOUNTABILITY, AND RELIABILITY OR GETTING THE BABIES WE WANT
- 1 Baby Markets
- 2 The Upside of Baby Markets
- 3 Price and Pretense in the Baby Market
- 4 Bringing Feminist Fundamentalism to U.S. Baby Markets
- 5 Producing Kinship through the Marketplaces of Transnational Adoption
- PART TWO SPACE AND PLACE: REPRODUCING AND REFRAMING SOCIAL NORMS OF RACE, CLASS, GENDER, AND OTHERNESS
- PART THREE SPECTRUMS AND DISCOURSES: RIGHTS, REGULATIONS, AND CHOICE
- PART FOUR THE ETHICS OF BABY AND EMBRYO MARKETS
- PART FIVE TENUOUS GROUNDS AND BABY TABOOS
- Author Bios
- Index
- References
Summary
The central claim of this chapter should not be a controversial one. The claim is simply this: that our nation's fundamental constitutional commitment to the equality of the sexes, and to the instantiation of that equality in the repudiation of “fixed notions concerning the roles and abilities of men and women,” should apply with full force in any legal intervention into the baby markets, including intervention in adoption and child custody disputes, as it does whenever the state necessarily intervenes in family matters.
What makes the claim more controversial than it should be is that many who are themselves personally and professionally committed to sex equality in American law and life are also committed to honoring other values, including religious freedom, cultural diversity, personal and family autonomy, and sharp limitations on governmental interference in private life and individual choice. Properly interpreted, however, existing U.S. law already commits us as a nation to sex equality as a priority, as I will demonstrate. I call the position I am seeking to vindicate feminist fundamentalism, by which I mean an uncompromising commitment to the equality of the sexes as intense and at least as worthy of respect as, for example, a religiously or culturally based commitment to female subordination or fixed sex roles. Both individuals and nation-states can have feminist fundamentalist commitments relevant to the legal regulation of the baby markets.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Baby MarketsMoney and the New Politics of Creating Families, pp. 56 - 68Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010