Surrogacy has something to offend everyone
By Jennifer Roback Morse, MercatorNet:
Whether you are progressive or conservative, feminist or pro-life, straight or gay, surrogacy is not the answer.
I am an outspoken critic of gestational surrogacy, in which the gestational mother carries a child to term for another person or couple. I have noticed that many people do not understand the stakes in this issue. Pro-life people think, “gosh, surrogacy makes babies, how can that be bad?” Feminists think, “gosh, surrogacy allows people to meet their reproductive goals, how can that be bad?”
Read on. Surrogacy has something to offend everyone.
Pro-life reasons to oppose surrogacy
Every surrogacy procedure retrieves eggs and fertilizes them outside the body. These are now tiny human beings. (That is why adults are willing to pay for them.)
Abortion: If the doctor implants multiple eggs hoping some of them will survive, the surrogate is sometimes contractually required to do “selective reduction,” and abort some of the babies.
Frozen Embryos: If “extra” embryos are created and not implanted, they are frozen indefinitely, destroyed immediately or “donated” for research.
Eugenics: Surrogates are sometimes contractually required to abort babies that do not meet the specifications of the “commissioning parents.”
Pro-woman reasons to oppose surrogacy
Broken bonds: The gestational mother’s bond to the child is treated as if it were important during the pregnancy, and completely irrelevant afterwards.
Objectifying women: The gestational mother is used for her womb and then is legally – and perhaps emotionally – set aside.
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