American Thinker's John Grondelski circles back to observe more pitfalls in the proposed surrogacy bills.

January 20, 2024

Michigan prepares to open Pandora’s box on surrogacy

Michigan’s legislature is back in session.  Among the bills that may be fast-tracked is a package to allow baby-buying and selling — i.e., “commercial surrogacy” — in the Great Lakes State.  The package was rammed through the lower chamber by a two-vote margin last Fall and may soon appear on the Senate calendar. 

In the effort to bring commercial surrogacy to Michigan, there are more questions than answers.  Since the legislation redefining what “parent” means was ramrodded through the lower house in 16 days, from introduction to final passage (56-53), I guess sponsor Samantha Steckloff is Michigan’s Nancy Pelosi: just “pass the bill so you can find out what’s in it.” 

Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.

Can a minor be a surrogate?  On the surface of Steckloff’s bill, no.  HB5207 stipulates the surrogate be 21 or older.  But many of the same folks who want to bring you commercial baby sales were the ones who advocated in 2022 for abortion on demand as a fundamental “right” under Article I, §28 of the Michigan Constitution.  That “right” is absolute and unqualified: the “fundamental right to reproductive freedom” is not age-limited.  Nor does it restrict that right to self-exercise: if you want to reproduce for others, that’s arguably your “choice.”  Even if the age limit stays in Steckloff’s bill, will it be found constitutional?

In any event, if you are the parent of an unemancipated minor, don’t expect to have any consent or even notification role if your daughter decides to be a surrogate.  At best, she will be consulting with a Planned Parenthood or ACLU lawyer to wipe out this bill’s nominal barriers, not you.

Michigan law since 1988 makes arranging a surrogacy contract with an unemancipated minor or a developmentally disabled female a felony punishable by a $50,000 fine and/or five years in jail (Michigan Penal Code, §722.857).  In the current push to legalize commercial surrogacy, the Michigan lower house November 9 repealed that ban, 56-53.  If promoters of commercial surrogacy were serious about their age and medical requirements for surrogates, why did they repeal the penalties?  Writing supposed limits into law while removing any penalty for violating them is talking out of both sides of one’s mouth.  So is the public policy of Michigan to discourage minors and developmentally disabled women from being surrogates...or not?

Why are we not hearing about this?

Let me suggest that one reason we are not hearing about it is that it would publicize various dirty little secrets of Michigan Democrats.  Section 722.903 of the Michigan Penal Code prohibits performing an abortion on a minor child without parental consent.  Michigan Democrats have tactically avoided outright attempts to repeal that requirement, aware of the political firestorm it could ignite, one that could consume the rest of their agenda and their legislative majority.  It’s generally assumed they hope quietly to repeal the law in the post-November lame duck session or let a state court do their work for them by declaring the ban unconstitutional under the new state “right to reproductive freedom.”  So let’s go through the kabuki theater of pretending there are age limits in place that either a late night in Lansing or some state judge (who contributes to and/or represented Planned Parenthood) will eliminate.  The honest truth is that, in the end, you should expect that minors will one day be able to be surrogates absent parental consent in Michigan. 

What about the developmentally disabled?  Since developmentally disabled persons can become parents, there’s no doubt an argument will be made that impairing their right to contract as paid surrogates would constitute “discrimination” against them and their agency.  Never mind that most developmentally disabled persons are not so financially secure, and that the monetary incentives could be appealing.  Never mind that the power dynamics between the average developmentally disabled person and the average person able to hire a surrogacy lawyer are mismatched in favor of the latter.  Never mind that — in contrast to egg donors — inasmuch as the surrogate is basically treated as an animate incubator adding nothing to the genetic heritage of the child, there would be less hesitation about using them.  Never mind that, given the dynamics of the surrogacy relationship, the likely purpose of the “medical evaluation” and the “mental health consultation” Steckloff’s bill requires of surrogates more likely will focus on whether she will successfully deliver the ordered goods (the baby).  Any fair-minded person would recognize how rife the potential for exploitation appears to be.  We’ll politely leave aside the ethically relevant question of determining capacity for informed consent.  We’ll just skate past all that by insisting you are “discriminating” by even asking the questions.

Finally, while it seems macabre, it should be noted: what about “dead” surrogates?  Because perinatal medicine involves two patients — mother and child — there have been instances where a mother’s injuries have caused her to be declared brain-dead but whose physiological functioning was artificially maintained (e.g., by ventilator) to enable her baby to reach viability and thus be delivered.  (Before some people start donning their Handmaid costumes, note that this has also happened when fathers and families want to at least give the baby a chance at life).  Just as we currently allow people to donate organs upon death (and sustain the donor’s body by artificial life support prior to the organ’s harvesting), would there be any prohibition on donating a woman’s body for use as a surrogate?  Granted, temporary life support is technologically less daunting than sustaining a pregnancy, but if there is opportunity, who are we to stand in the way of “medical progress”?  U of M has a quality medical school, and research in this field would be highly lucrative. 

This is not fantasy.  Anna Smajdor of the University of Oslo (Norway) published an article in 2022 advocating “whole body gestational surrogacy” involving physiologically sustained brain dead women.  Bioethicists have already debated whether parents can harvest a deceased child’s gametes to produce grandchildren.  Posthumously obtained gametes could also help increase supply of limited “raw material” to help surrogates have “the babies they so much want.”  Do state laws even envision such scenarios? 

Using the “dead enough” (to borrow Dr. George Mychaskiw’s phrase term describing those whose organs we covet) as surrogates would really reduce labor costs, a grotesque marriage of altruistic surrogacy to commercial availability. 

One can sympathize with those who want children.  But buying a baby — or the “parts” to make and deliver one — pose profound questions about our humanity.  Commercial surrogacy, which puts a heavy financial incentive on the scale, distorts the discussion.  But the bottom line remains: does Michigan want surrogates — paid or unpaid — who are minors, developmentally disabled, or maybe even dead?

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2024/01/michigan_prepares_to_open_pandoras_box_on_surrogacy.html

At a low point in his life, the prophet Elijah said. "O Lord, take away my life, for I am not better than my fathers.”

Walking with the eternal God gives perspective conspicuously lacking in mankind's grander flights of fancy... Like re-ordering reproduction and redefining parenthood.

January 9, 2024

Are We Really Getting Morally Better?

By John M. Grondelski

The more things supposedly change, the more they really stay the same.  That’s especially true when we try to talk about moral progress.

Barack Obama loved telling us that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.”  Joe Biden always assures us that history is moving towards “progress,” which is why we’re lectured to be “on the right side of history” (which is usually the left side).

None of this is new.  It all comes from Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who claimed history is on auto-pilot towards greater moral progress, ever higher moral vistas—he said that right after dropping off his five kids from his mistress at an orphanage, on his way to writing Émile, his book about how to raise children.

Take last week: January 4th marked the 128th anniversary of Utah’s admission as the 45th state.  Utah was an outlier, as most of the states around it (except Arizona and New Mexico) had joined the Union earlier, even though almost all of them were settled later.  Brigham Young was in the Great Salt Desert by the late 1840s, and the “State of Deseret” was seeking admission before the Civil War.  What took Utah so long?

One word: polygamy.

19th century Republicans, like some of their 20th and 21st century heirs, were into fighting culture wars.  The 1856 platform—the GOP’s first presidential race—pledged to combat the “twin relics of barbarism,” slavery and polygamy.  1865 and the end of the Civil War resolved the former.  (MEMO: send note to Nikki Haley).  Republicans then turned to polygamy, not resting until federal laws punished polygamy and Utah was compelled to write its prohibition into its first state constitution.  As Princeton Prof. Robert George observed, it was Republicans who fought the moral scourges of the nineteenth century.

Looking back at our moral “progress,” I wonder if we don’t owe Utahans an apology.  Maybe, in fact, we should actually kick Utah out and admit Deseret instead.

After all, moderns declare that “love is love.”  Well, if “love is love,” why do the number of persons involved matter?  Indeed, if one is quantitatively prolific, isn’t he arguably more loving?

What we once called “polygamous” we today call “polyamorous.”  It’s not just po-ta-to/po-tah-to.  “Polygamy” presupposes marriage and plural nuptials are (currently) banned in all fifty states.  But since marriage itself now competes with a plethora of other “relationship” models, as well as having been itself redefined as essentially whatever the spouses want it to be, polyamory—plural relationships not (yet) marriage—is blossoming.  Somerville, Massachusetts already recognizes them.

And, if “love is love,” why not?

So, as long as we are resurrecting ancient barbarisms under new labels, how about the push in Michigan to legalize commercial baby-buying, AKA “commercial surrogacy?”  Michigan’s lower house already signed on; the legislative package is now pending in the Senate.

The legislation explicitly redefines “parenthood” to exclude genetics or biology, at least as they apply to surrogacy.  Sharing your DNA with the child through your gametes does not make you a “parent” (at least according to sponsor Rep. Samantha Steckloff, Democrat of Farmington Hills).  You just provided parts.  Nor does sharing your body through your womb make you a “parent.”  You’re just a living incubator, rented for nine months.

Proponents of surrogacy will tug at the heartstrings, demanding sympathy for adults who “want to have children but can’t.”  But while we may empathize, we need to be wary of putting the cart before the horse.  Because, in order to accommodate the wants of adults, we are bludgeoning the rights of children.

We are saying children’s genetic heritage doesn’t matter. We are saying that the body within whom one grows and develops is just a vessel, an animate incubator that provides warmth and nutrition until the agreed upon delivery date for the goods.  “Just sign here….”

But, perhaps most important of all, we are saying that Michigan’s laws should—at least in the case of surrogacy—set aside genetic and biological relationality in preference to other criteria.

Like polyamory, we have precedent for the surrogacy “parenting” arrangement, too.  In ancient Rome, a father’s will trumped genetics and biology.  Because the child was presented to the father of the house (who was also usually the child’s father), he decided whether that child might be honored to have him as “father.”  If father refused his fatherly name and responsibilities, the child could be left abandoned with impunity in the woods.  This Roman version of Giubili’s and Minerva’s “post-natal abortion” proposal (and a few wolves) took care of “populations we didn’t want too many of,” like Down’s Syndrome children, medically distressed infants, or an excess of girls who represented asset-draining dowries.

Rep. Steckloff certainly wouldn’t give just any man such unlimited powers of patriarchy.  No, she reserves the right to confer the honor of being called “parent” to someone with a big enough checkbook to pay for conceiving and gestating-on-demand a biologically orphaned baby.  Eugenic and quality control issues can now be prenatally addressed through Michigan’s unreserved “fundamental right of reproductive freedom,” so much less visible than a she-wolf.  (On the other hand, the Capitoline Wolf saved Romulus’s and Remus’s lives).

Plus ça change….

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/01/are_we_really_getting_morally_better.html

One year later, results are coming out.

The Daily Wire publishes this story with comments from Matt Walsh.

https://www.dailywire.com/news/viral-clip-of-gay-couples-birthday-party-for-twins-ignites-surrogacy-debate

Viral Clip Of Gay Couple’s Birthday Party For Twins Ignites Surrogacy Debate

"This should be illegal."

By Amanda Harding    |    Apr 28, 2025 

A video of an influencer couple celebrating their twins’ first birthday has reignited the conversation about the morality of surrogacy.

The clip in question shows Joseph and Nathan Hughes, two gay hair stylists who live in Texas, throwing a lavish birthday party for the children. The Hughes men are popular on social media for showcasing their family.

The couple’s friend Kortney, who works at their salon, donated eggs while Joseph’s sister Breeanna acted as a gestational carrier for the couple, per The Mirror.

Joseph and Nathan have been sharing extensively online about their experience, but the video of the birthday party has gone viral as viewers question the overall idea of surrogacy, plus observe how the twins don’t seem excited or happy at the party, noting how neither one smiles during the video.

“This should be illegal,” one reply said.

Another chimed in, writing, “Why do those babies look like they don’t even know these people?”

“The fact that they used friends and family as their donor and surrogate is less disturbing than paying some random woman to completely abandon the child they carried for nine months,” another person wrote. “My biggest concern with both of these babies is their lack of eye contact and facial expressions in every video I’ve ever seen of them. They’re completely disconnected which makes me wonder what happens off camera.”

“As a mom, I am so upset by the children’s reactions and body language,” another echoed. “You can tell they are not only uncomfortable, they are not happy. And they can buy them all the things in the world and dress them up cute, but any sane person who has had a child can see there is NO connection between those babies and the people holding them.”

Daily Wire podcast host Matt Walsh, who has spoken about moral concerns regarding surrogacy in the past, also commented on the clip.

“Somehow ‘social conservatives’ still get a bad rap, even on the Right. But we’ve been right about every issue and usually decades ahead,” he tweeted. “We’ve been saying for many years that gay adoption and surrogacy should be illegal. Now everyone else seems to be catching on. This is an abomination.”

“It is, in a sense, child trafficking. Selling a baby as a prop, a plaything is just wrong,” another wrote. “Let’s check in on these two and the kid in 10 years.”