Main content

Shopping Around the Baby Market

Gulzaar Barn from King's College London asks questions about commercial surrogacy and the way we view our bodies in an Essay from the Free Thinking Festival at Sage Gateshead.

Commercial surrogacy 鈥 the practice of paying another woman to carry a pregnancy to term 鈥 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 鈥渞enting out鈥 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鈥檚 College, London in the Dickson Poon School of Law. The Essay was recorded at the Free Thinking Festival at Sage Gateshead and a longer version with audience questions is available as a 大象传媒 Arts&Ideas podcast.

New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by 大象传媒 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

Available now

14 minutes

Last on

Thu 4 Apr 2019 22:45

Broadcast

  • Thu 4 Apr 2019 22:45

Featured in...

Death in Trieste

Death in Trieste

A 1760s murder still informs ideas about aesthetics, a certain sort of sex, and death.

Watch: My Deaf World

Watch: My Deaf World

Five compelling experiences of what it is like to be deaf in 21st-century Britain.

The Book that Changed Me

Five figures from the arts and science introduce books that changed their lives and work.

Download The Essay

Download The Essay

Download all the episodes from the series and listen at your leisure.

Podcast