ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses allocation objections to different kinds of markets in babies. It examines the question of whether it is wrongful to pay for a 'designer baby'. According to the Wall Street Journal, A personal-genomics company in California has been awarded a broad US patent for a technique that could be used in a fertility clinic to create babies with selected traits, as the frontiers of genetic enhancement continue to advance. However, the legal market is dysfunctional because the legally mandated price of white babies is artificially low. Economist Elisabeth Landes and legal theorist Richard Posner famously defended a freer market in adoption rights. As legal theorist Kimberly Krawiec elaborates, it's a dangerous 'pretense' for governments to pretend that no such markets exist. Just as Michael Sandel favored queues in the distribution of tickets to Shakespeare in the Park, he presumably would favor a lottery rather than a market in the distribution of adoption rights.
