The Danger and Detachment of Surrogacy

Family policy matters in engaging and informative weekly radio show and podcast produced by the North Carolina family policy Council hi this is John Ralston, presidency, family, and were grateful to have you with us for this week's program is our prayer that you will be informed, encouraged and inspired by what you hear on family policy matters and that you will flow better equipped to be a voice of persuasion for family values in your community, state and nation, and now here's our house to family policy matters. Tracy Devitt Griggs thanks for joining us this week for family policy matters most Christians wholeheartedly agree that children are a gift from God. But sadly we may know, or we may be a wonderful couple struggling with infertility. It can be art breaking.

So much so that some of these couples turn to a variety of biotechnologies they hope will help in our society and even among Christian circles. Surrogacy may seem like a practical solution to the problem will just recently Anderson Cooper made national headlines announcing the birth of his son by an unnamed surrogate and when a columnist suggested that the unnamed surrogate might deserve some credit. The backlash was swift and aggressive. What is it possible that behind what many see as a selfless act of surrogacy buys a culture of exploitation. Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse, founder and president of the Ruth Institute is here to talk with us about that.

Dr. Morris welcome to family policy matters.

Thank you so much for having me. Many of us have friends or relatives who have struggled with infertility.

This is a tough topic but you and others have argued that in surrogacy the rights of the child are almost never considered what you mean by that development. For the record that I experienced infertility years ago and so very prophetic with the plight of infertile couples, but the rights of the child are paramount, and what I mean by that is the right of every person to come into existence as a result of an act of love between their mother and father and along with that comes a right to know your mother and father, the right to be in relationship with your mother and father also protection of the bond between your mother and father to all of those things are wrapped up in the sexual act and the sexual act and this is why God's plan things the way he has so that all of those things are preserved for the child and for the couple themselves very well known artificial technology procedures themselves have medical risks associated with them.

Just go screw the problems associated which include low birth weight, a high probability of preterm birth.

Cerebral palsy variety of problems that are more likely if you're using any form of in vitro fertilization and that of course is true whether it's sure good toward the husband and wife using their own JMH or damage of purchaser or anything like that idea carries risks for the trial.

Without wish, the industry is he saying that surrogacy is so appealing even to religious couples who truly do see children as a guest while we all sort of seemingly onboard with how this is a wonderful thing. Well, I think it goes back to the sort of consumer mindset that we as Americans have and that's not a Christian or non-Christian thing that American thing that we are very consumerist were used to going by what we want and we think we can were allowed to legally available.

We are allowed to do what he calls from European feminists. Tracy change me bearing the stuff over here where the American where the American Christian what's going on. Don't so there's usually a sense of entitlement because we want it. That's good reason to do it. Of course we know that's not true but that's my we get into writing. We we have a fancy word for that for buying and selling, and we call it, modifying right so talk little bit about that and how surrogacy modifies children and even women modify or commodification. What were saying. If it turns the person which is a practice that turns the person from a person created in the image and likeness of God and turns them into a commodity, something that can be bought and sold is properly the object of contracts and stuff like that and so the way sure she works is that the commissioning parents, and that's what they're called commissioning parents purchase and then they rip the rule of usually another person. Okay answering got to involve the gestational surrogate who was the person who cares the genetic mother. The person who donates and so in both cases, what you got is a financial transaction taking place where the person doing the purchasing is generally better off financially than the person that their buying problem people are buying from process to deliver the baby to the person who commissioned it and they have no legal rights whatsoever ever again. That's what this contract amounts to show it looks like the buying and selling people thing that should be said all of this comes to a head.

Anderson Cooper's case Anderson Cooper himself is the child of Gloria Vanderbilt okay this is a man who was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. She is openly gay and talks about that he reached talked about how much he loved his mother and how his mother was so happy when she found out that he was going to become a father other matters to him. What is the mother of others that he has you so Cooper by an rentable and now it's got a nanny to take care of the baby child is paying to handle transactions.

One transaction after another, every aspect of the selected should be governed by log, not by money or child is on the people of God and although injustice was done to little Wyatt Cooper here in the manner of his conception was unjust to him, but he is a child of God. We must never regret the child himself, but that doesn't get us off the hook for immoral practices here, absolutely. Thank you for saying that.

So you even gone as far as to say that surrogacy is a means of quote unquote female erasure surrogacy is a form of female erasure. The very thing that Joyce Carol Oates said in her tweet about Anderson Cooper's baby. She said dear. Anderson was both mother and father to this child and this woman delivered the baby to him and now she's cleared and everybody got so mad at her about that. But the fact that both of surrogate mother and the genetic mother in the justice promoter have both been completely legally and socially erased from this child's life and so were saying women are not necessary. If your man you got enough money, linking the legal right to acquire babies without any relationship with the child's mother whatsoever that idea.

I just don't get all kinds of things in the contract that the surrogate has to sign as well, aren't there that could be problematic over some 20s contracts include clauses like the commissioning parents have the right to tell her to have an abortion if they change their mind.

If there's a certain kind of genetic defects are discovered somewhere along the lines they may have the right to tell her that she has to abort the baby they may tell her that she has to do selective reduction in pledge of multiple embryos in her womb show. It's not a new school. I will say it always happens but it certainly not unusual Trajan for there to be an abortion requirement built into the into the contract so the United States has often been referred to as the wild West of the fertility industry. Do you think that description is accurate yet totally accurate third United States is the wild West of the fertility industry and ancient international big business people need to understand that it is a big business and multibillion-dollar business. They have the capacity of doing lots and lots of very favorable publicity for themselves and so what you see the image that they're able to project his image that's scuttling a warm and soft and loving you were making babies and is not wonderful but all the been talking about the dark side you don't see that in the public image so it's very important for Christian to look beyond those headlines and look beyond the appetizing copy to realize that this is a business and then run like a business and exploitation of women in the buying and selling of children is part of what this business is doing silly and so wild West with this one exception that the government absolutely protects the insured contract and important wild West without the government protecting certain kinds of contracts and saying we are going to enforce these kinds of contracts without the government saying we are legally erasing certain people from the child's life and sinks their mother, their daughter is simply a donor and is a legal stranger to the child without doing that this industry wouldn't exist. What else do our listeners need to know about this issue.

First thing you need to know is if you know a child of any kind of third-party reproduction. Please know that that child is a child of God and loved by the child and he was never regret the child. Check it please inform yourself that that child may end up having different kinds of issues that will be very typical to discussions on the family so if there is jealousy between the couple was the natural parents of the one who was not the natural parent was the social parent but somebody brought it in and there's often tension inside the family here on the outside looking in trying to make yourself available to be helpful, which is extremely delicate, but be aware that that's part of the dynamic of the scope of three people who have infertility problems to understand that there are natural methods for dealing with whole lot since not all about the issues and something called maple technology which we could do another show on but there are some natural solutions for some of these problems and finally bitten fertility itself is a spiritual crisis and therefore you need to increase the closeness of the walk with Jesus Christ.

During that period of time. For me that's what was infertility was a huge spiritual crisis in my life and so I would commend to look in that direction looked across the outlook towards the minimal white lab coats not really your friends. So what power do we have on the state level course the North Carolina family policy Council.

We deal primarily with state policy what our state lawmakers if they happen to be listening. What could they do to address this low hanging fruit for your sake lawmakers and that infertility practices within their state. Whether it's a doctor's office or for increased demand accurate record-keeping so that when people walk through that door and they are quoted some kind of failure link that you know exactly what is being quoted to them because sometimes you go in there and they'll tell you we have this rate of success got this many pregnancies but they don't tell you how many carriages they have. They'll tell you how many live births to end up with don't tell you what kind of birth defects and content. In short, sold very simple claims for lawmakers in any state to begin is to regulate the kinds of information that the infertility practices are required to keep as far as I know we don't have accurate information from a lot of these places a lot of it's voluntary. It's not uniform. So a lot of the questions were talking about. We don't know the full extent of them because nobody's keeping track, I think your lawmakers could easily make the case in the public interest would be well informed a new watch and see the infertility industry throws up about that while we are about out of time before we go though listeners go to learn more about surrogacy and all the good work of the Ruth Institute. I really hope your listeners will join us over at God at work that's our main website have destitute store have a pamphlet called children and donor conception sugar production and that has a lot of the facts and figures on the subject and suppose we are able to discern it and our website we have a special page for persons where we catalogued all of the various articles and relevant information that pertains to the experiences of donor conceived persons. Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse was founder and president of the Ruth Institute, thank you so much for being with us today on family policy matters even listening to family policy. We hope you enjoyed the program and plenitude in again next week to listen to the show online insulin more about NC families were to inform, encourage and inspire families across a lot of our website it NC family.work that's NC family.org. Thanks again for listening and may God bless you and your family