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Notes -
A counterpoint: Westerners
trafficpurchase children from far poorer countries all the time, as in Western countries the demand for kids to adopt far exceeds the supply (whereas the opposite is true in the host country).This is done openly and their activities are usually portrayed positively, even though children are generally considered possessions (their involuntary labor is your right as a parent or guardian) in the West for the first 18 years of their life.
What's the difference between this kind of remote adoption, enslaving workers from foreign countries (for labor or prostitution, which is what people usually mean by "trafficking"), and domestic surrogacy? Because I don't think there's a difference at all, and the argument against those things can be made, but is not defensible on strictly utilitarian grounds (because if it was, human history wouldn't contain the amount of slavery that it currently does).
Do you think it is charitable to put emphasis on how you have a right to the child's involuntary labor "in the West" when actual such cases are almost unheard of in the West (aside from making them clean their room) and ubiquitous in the third world?
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In the OP I wrote how I have issues with how adoption works out in practice, and that would be one of them. In theory the difference is that the kids list their parents to some tragedy, and need someone to take care if them. In practice it ends up being an industry because of the supply/demand dynamics you brought up.
There are some bad things specific to surrogacy though. An orphan already lost their parents, surrogacy deliberately puts a child in the situation where they will be abandoned by one of the parents, which otherwise would not have happened.
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