Bioethics – Page 7 – Family Council

Abortion’s Barbarity Continues

Aug 2, 2021John StonestreetAbortion, BioethicsAbortion, Bioethics, Life, Pro-life, Sanctity of Human Life

*John Stonestreet, Radio Host and Director of the Colson Center*

Recently, the world learned that researchers at the University of Pittsburgh were grafting the scalps of aborted infants onto the flesh of rodents. And now, prolife group Live Action has uncovered that researchers at a California university has been trading in various body parts of aborted children, specifically genitalia, bladders, and kidneys.

Perhaps most unsettling is the indifference of the people involved to what in any other context would be considered barbaric. Emails uncovered included pleasantries about the weekend and hopes for a happy holiday, exchanged between the parties amidst logs of body parts bought and sold.

This is what Hannah Arendt called “the banality of evil.” The great crimes of history are often committed, not by monsters, but by ordinary folks in day to day life. And so building a culture of life will involve not only passing laws and attending marches, but exposing the scale of assault on human dignity that passes in the name of science.

How to Import a Baby

Jul 6, 2021John StonestreetBioethics, SurrogacyCommercial Surrogacy

Recently, The Atlantic described a problem unique to the 21st century: “stateless” babies.

Here’s the situation: a gay couple uses their own sperm, an egg donor, and a surrogate mother. The result is twin boys, born in Canada. One was genetically related to his American father; the other to the partner, an Israeli citizen. The men wanted to bring the twins to the U.S. but one wasn’t an American citizen. Diplomatic woes ensued.

As the reporter put it, “When a child can have five possible parents, whose citizenship counts?” The exploitation and cold consumerism that create this kind of legal riddle shouldn’t be considered “unintended consequences” of assisted reproduction; they are inherent in the process of separating babies from the moms and dads who create them.

This puzzle isn’t really about solving an immigration puzzle. Only recognizing that every child has the right to his or her own father and mother can do that.

Surrogacy Never Goes Right

Jun 21, 2021John StonestreetBioethics, SurrogacyBioethics, Commercial Surrogacy, Surrogacy

Last month LiveAction shared a story from the New Zealand Herald about a couple whose surrogacy experience went terribly wrong. After a surrogate mom volunteered to carry a couple’s IVF-conceived child, she began suffering prenatal depression and opted for an abortion.

The biological parents were devastated and helpless. Their story is one of many ways surrogacy goes wrong.

But does it ever go right?

Even if the surrogate mother had carried the baby to term, the child would be deprived of its biological mom. In cases where donor gametes are involved, the children of surrogacy lose their right to their biological mom or dad, or both. Increasingly, when the intended parents are a same-sex couple, the child is denied a mommy or daddy altogether.

Surrogacy may attempt to fix brokenness, but it always creates more. Even when everything goes according to plan, there’s a cost paid by the only one who didn’t consent: the child.