Ellen Goodman was an American journalist, speaker, commentator, and syndicated columnists. She wrote several books and articles throughout her career. 'Womb for Rent-For a Price' is one of her most popular articles. In the book, Ellen Goodman spoke about the morality of surrogate mothers. I am interested in the above article because of the rising number of surrogate cases that have been observed in the 21 st century. Celebrities such as Tyra Banks and Kim Kardashian have had some of their children through surrogate births. I am also interested in the topic because of the controversy that is associated with the morality of surrogate births. Some people may argue that surrogate births are morally right because it allows barren women to have babies, while others may say that surrogate births are ethically wrong because they use children as property for sale. This rhetorical analysis aims at looking at Ellen's strong opinion about surrogate births and some of the factors that she made use of to justify her stand.
In her book, Ellen Goodman tried to convince the audience why the practice of surrogate births should be banned. Ellen Goodman explained in the article that surrogate services widen the gap between the rich and the poor, therefore putting the poor at a disadvantage. Ellen Goodman began by explaining that the USA has an economic advantage over the rest of the countries since it has one of the strongest economies ( Goodman, 169) . Therefore, USA citizens have the privilege of outsourcing products and services because of the strength of their currency, which puts them at an economic advantage. Similarly, most American women have taken advantage of the strength of the USA dollar to outsource surrogate services in low-income countries.
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Ellen continued to explain that unlike previous years, surrogate mothers today treat surrogate pregnancies as a way of employment, instead of treating surrogate births as a humanitarian act of helping barren children to have babies. Low-income countries, such as India has thousands of surrogate mothers. The poor economy in India and the lack of employment has forced Indian women to opt to be surrogate mothers. Research shows that surrogate mothers in India earn approximately 5,000-7,000 USD, which is a decade worth of salary for most of the women who live in the rural parts of India ( Goodman, 170) . Most of the India women, therefore, use surrogate births to get easy mother. Ellen consequently explained that the high frequency of surrogate births among countries India is fast commercializing surrogate births, which is why surrogate services have to be banned.
Secondly, Ellen argued that surrogate birth over the past few decades had widened the bridge that exists between the rich and the poor. Ellen explained, on the hand, the rich women take advantage of the fact that they have money to hire the services of surrogate mothers. In the event, some of the rich women sometimes opt higher their surrogate services to maintain their body shape. Poor women, on the other hand, though barren, cannot afford the services of the surrogate mothers. It is unfair that barren mother who belongs to the high-income families are given the opportunity of having children while the low-income barren women are denied the chance of having children ( Goodman, 169) . This is also one of the reasons why Ellen insists that surrogate births should be banned. Additionally, Ellen also argued that numerous cases had been reported where intermediaries take advantage of where low-income surrogate mothers by underpaying them, which further justifies why surrogate services should be banned.
The article incorporates every claim made with new evidence and specific topics in almost every paragraph. This means that Ellen backs up every claim with direct evidence. For instance, “We’ve also seen the growth of an international economy. Frozen sperm is flown from one continent to another. And patients have become medical tourists, searching for cheaper health care whether it’s a new hip in Thailand or an IVF treatment in South Africa that comes with a photo safari thrown in for the same price. Why not then rent a foreign womb?” ( Goodman, 169). This paragraph starts with a claim followed by a supporting fact. This is one of the many strategies Ellen uses to persuade her readers.
I believe that Ellen is right in her argument. Commercializing surrogate births puts high-income earners at an unfair advantage because they stand high chances of hiring the services while their low-income families continue to suffer. It is also true that there are numerous cases where low-income surrogate mothers have been taken advantage of by middlemen. However, I do not support Ellen in her conclusion. I think it is only fair that barren mothers are given the opportunity of having their children.
Additionally, surrogates' births give low-income women a chance of earning a considerable amount of income, which they would have otherwise not have had. The difference between the rich and poor will always be present in every sector. For instance, the rich will still afford better medical services as compared to the poor, better houses, education, cars and many more. The fact that the poor cannot provide surrogate services is not reason enough to ban surrogate services.
References
Goodman, E., (2016). Womb for rent. In J. Ramage, J. Bean & J. Johnson (Eds.), Writing arguments: A rhetoric with readings (p. 169). Boston, MA: Pearson
