Imagine being transported to another time, in which you’re standing at a slave market. The slaves are shackled and afraid. You watch as your neighbors bid on the purchase of these people. You go home and hear from your excited uncle. He has a new worker, a slave, a child. The social norm is to congratulate him on his purchase. Would you?

It’s so easy to say no when we’re departed from it, when we’re never going to be tested, so we issue our denials thoughtlessly and yet with confidence. Slavery has appeared across civilizations—from ancient Mediterranean cities to medieval Europe where Slavs were captured and sold, and beyond. Its cruelty was never limited to any one race or culture. Operation Field Guide:... Ross, Jason Best Price: $4.50 Buy New $6.95 (as of 08:46 UTC - Details)

Most of us jump reflexively to deny that we would be party to such an evil, and we readily paint self-portraits of our would-be heroism in the face of it. But reality can be an unforgiving mirror.

What do we do when that homosexual couple in the family texts a photo of the baby that they purchased through surrogacy? Or when a favorite online “personality” tweets out their new acquisition? It feels emotionally complicated because we recognize the buyer. We think we know them. We laugh at the jokes they tell. Our recognition of their humanity makes it easier to tell ourselves comfortable lies—that’s why it’s so much easier to condemn the slave trader of the past than of the present. We would rather not admit the truth to ourselves: we witnessed a modern slave market. It’s simply too awful to consider.

The truth would demand too much of us. We couldn’t just hit the like button and keep scrolling, or even look the other way. We would be duty bound to respond with outrage, indignation, and even grief at the magnitude of the injustice. We would want to burn down the modern-day slave market and rescue those vulnerable children from the grasp of those who would reduce them to commodities. Anything less would be unthinkable.

It’s ironic that our recognition of the humanity of the modern-day slave traders is what allows them to commodify their victims with impunity. Rebukes against those who purchase newborns through surrogacy can seem harsh and uncaring in a world numb to the personhood of the real victims.

We’ve redecorated the institution of slavery so that we don’t have to admit what we are doing. There are no shackles, merely a birth certificate bearing the names of one’s owners. The child is delivered into the arms of its owners in blankets, and one of the most respected institutions of modern society (medicine) encourages the façade with unneeded beds for men who did not give birth, along with well-orchestrated photo ops. It is as socially acceptable as buying a slave has been in different times in history. It’s as scientifically legitimized as lobotomizing your troublesome child or sterilizing the mentally handicapped.

Of course, these children are not bought to be laborers (we hope), but they are entertainers nevertheless. As items to be bought and sold, they are placed into a home because of what they can do for the purchasers. Perhaps they can provide the purchaser with a sense of fulfillment at having achieved one of life’s milestones; or they can make him feel less lonely; or they can validate his feelings that his household is in some way more like those of the families in his neighborhood. More importantly, the child is not correctly recognized as a gift, to be protected and treated as such, born out of the loving embrace of his mother and father. His inherent dignity as a human being is eviscerated in favor of his utility as the plaything of a buyer with deep pockets. Chair Yoga For Seniors... The Star Publications Buy New $24.95 (as of 12:01 UTC - Details)

Stories of abuse in these scenarios are beginning to emerge, but let us focus instead on the abuse that is inherent to the transactional nature of these acquisitions. The child is born as the product of a science experiment that sacrificed his siblings, exploited a poor woman for her womb, and deprived him of both his mother and the woman who carried him, with whom he shares a unique bond. He is violated from the moment of his conception. And for the sake of the happiness of his purchasers, he will be deprived of a healthy family dynamic forever—not because of a tragedy but by orchestrated design.

We claim to be better than the people of pre-modernity: learned, developed, civilized. But our most vulnerable experience a different reality. These victims must live in the knowledge that they were sold and purchased—a product in a contract that demanded their execution if they had an unexpected health problem or if they were on the losing end of “selective reduction” because too many of their siblings survived implantation. This is not something that we can choose to celebrate or ignore. It is an institution that deserves our relentless opposition until the day we can sneer at it as casually as we now do the slave market.

Our commodification of the unborn perpetuates the same moral blindness that once made slave markets possible. It is a tragic but unsurprising reality that many young people today are fighting against meaninglessness. When we tolerate surrogacy, we build a society that debases who man is, reduces him to an object, and provides moral assent to all manner of evils made possible by this willfully blind and egregious concession.

This article was originally published on Crisis Magazine.