PHIL103: Moral and Political Philosophy

Watch the rest of this lecture, from 27:07 to the end. While you watch, consider this question: Whose rights take precedence, those of the mother, or those of the child? Motherhood immediately presents a complication to the general theory of natural rights. Everyone who is familiar with the debate over abortion knows this. The matter becomes yet more complicated when motherhood, and in a sense, children, are exchanged on the free market. In this lecture, Sandel introduces the case of Baby M, in which a surrogate mother's claim to the baby she has carried came into conflict with the claim of the baby's biological father.