Jump to ContentJump to Main Navigation
For Dignity or Money: Feminists on the Commodification of Women's Reproductive Labournull

Carolyn McLeod

Abstract and Keywords

This article aims to lay out the ‘for money’ and ‘for dignity’ arguments that feminist ethicists have given about the reproductive labour women perform in providing oocytes or in getting pregnant for others. Feminist arguments about the morality of these two practices overlap significantly because, from a feminist perspective, the morally relevant facts about them are quite similar. Still, there are dissimilarities, stemming from the obvious fact that one practice involves giving up oocytes while the other involves giving up a baby after a pregnancy. Some arguments by feminists reflect this core difference, in that they apply specifically to one practice but not to the other. The article highlights when the relevance of a particular argument differs for these different reproductive practices.

Keywords: reproductive labour, oocytes, feminist arguments, pregnancy, reproductive practices, commodification, alienability

Oxford Handbooks Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of titles within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view restricted versions of this content, plus any full text content that is freely available.

Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.

If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.

To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs, and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us .