Commercial Surrogacy – Page 2

How to Import a Baby

Jul 6, 2021John StonestreetBioethics, SurrogacyCommercial Surrogacy

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

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.

Kenyans Erased for Lucrative Baby Business

Jun 14, 2021John StonestreetBioethics, Life, SurrogacyCommercial Surrogacy, Life, Surrogacy

Recently, a reporter who went undercover to investigate the growing international commercial surrogacy industry in Kenya found that Kenya has no real laws on the books governing surrogacy. Some would-be parents, including wealthy international couples, fudge the rules to get what they want. In some cases, couples have convinced the surrogate to illegally list their names on the child’s birth certificate – which legally erases the mother from the child’s life, forever.

With one-third of Kenyans living in poverty, and the cost of surrogacy less than a third of what it cost in the United States, the situation is ripe for exploitation, corruption, and violence.

And there is no official count of the number of babies born by surrogacy in Kenya. Every one is born into a tragic situation. Even if it were just one, it’s awful. Neither babies nor poor women are bodies for sale. And every child has a right to their own mother and father.