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Playing God Without the Wisdom of God
Crisis Magazine ^ | March 7, 2013 | George Neumayr

Posted on 03/09/2013 2:09:26 PM PST by NYer

IVF pic

The dominant secular culture portrays the world of In vitro fertilization (IVF) and surrogate pregnancies as a great advance for mankind, even as it generates a stream of horror stories beyond the imagination of Greek tragedians.

Not a week passes, it seems, without a new disturbing permutation to this culture. “Surrogate offered $10,000 to abort baby,” reported CNN this week.

So now surrogates are offered money not just to carry children but to abort them. A more complete headline on CNN’s story would have been: “Surrogate offered $10,000 to abort baby diagnosed as disabled.” Untroubled by eugenic abortion, CNN doesn’t even bother to engage that obvious element in the story.

Was the surrogate mother (who didn’t end up getting the abortion) a “Savior or Satan”? asks CNN fatuously: “In one view, she’s a saint who fought at great personal sacrifice for an unborn child whose own parents did not want her to live. In another view, she recklessly absconded with someone else’s child and brought into the world a baby who faces serious medical challenges when that wasn’t her decision to make.”

Before telling this tangled tale, CNN, showing its pro-IVF bias, says most “surrogacies have happy endings.” This claim ignores that the first stage of the process involves, among other injustices, freezing or discarding “excess” embryos, which is not a happy ending for them.

Yet even after that injustice, the doctors and agencies described in this CNN story couldn’t give the couple that arranged the surrogacy the child they wanted. Consequently, the couple demanded that the surrogate mother abort the disabled child. The surrogate mother at first bargained with them, asking for $15,000 instead of $10,000 to abort the child.

But then the surrogate mother had second thoughts: “No one else was feeling this pregnancy the way that I was. No one else could feel her kicking and moving around inside me. I knew from the beginning that this little girl had an amazing fighting spirit, and whatever challenges were thrown at her, she would go at them with every ounce of spirit that she could possibly have.”

“I can’t tell you how many people told me that I was bad, that I was wrong, that I should go have an abortion, that I would be damned to hell,” she said.

Such is the entitled view of the eugenic abortionists. Yet CNN thinks the ethical question here is not the proposed abortion but the decision-making that went into it: Who had the right to make that decision? Did the couple that arranged the surrogacy have the right to that decision? Or was that a decision for the surrogate mother?

The law on this issue varies from state to state. “Over the years, states have developed different laws about surrogacy. Some, like Connecticut, say the genetic parents—the ones who supplied the sperm and the egg—are the baby’s legal parents. Other states don’t recognize surrogacy contracts, and so the baby legally belongs to the woman who’s carrying the baby,” according to CNN.

To make the story even more confusing, the “genetic parents” in this case had used an “anonymous egg donor.” So their claim as the biological parents of the child—all so that they could have the child aborted—grew even more shaky.

Undaunted by that problem, they unleashed their lawyer on the surrogate mother. “You are obligated to terminate this pregnancy immediately. You have squandered precious time,” he wrote to her.

One more layer of confusion in the story is that the surrogate mother put the child up for adoption. So now at least five people can claim to be her parent.

The spirit of domination and hubris underlying IVF culture comes out in stories like these. It is no wonder that the children of IVF grow more and more resentful.

In 2006, Katrina Clark wrote bitterly about her experience as a child of IVF in the pages of the Washington Post: “We didn’t ask to be born into this situation, with its limitations and confusion. It’s hypocritical of parents and medical professionals to assume that biological roots won’t matter to the ‘products’ of the cryobanks’ service, when the longing for a biological relationship is what brings customers to the banks in the first place.”

Playing God without the wisdom of God, which is what transferring reproduction from marriage to the lab inevitably means, produces these insoluble ethical messes, shattering the “equality that must be common to parents and children,” as the Church teaches.

IVF infringes “the child’s right to be born of a father and mother known to him and bound to each other by marriage,” says the Catechism of the Catholic Church. The world scoffs at this teaching, but CNN’s story offers one more confirmation of it, depicting the child as nothing more than an object over which conflicting “parents,” lawyers, and “genetic counselors” can fight.



TOPICS: Business/Economy; Constitution/Conservatism; Culture/Society; Philosophy
KEYWORDS: abortion; ivf; surrogacy

1 posted on 03/09/2013 2:09:26 PM PST by NYer
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To: netmilsmom; thefrankbaum; Tax-chick; GregB; saradippity; Berlin_Freeper; Litany; SumProVita; ...
o make the story even more confusing, the “genetic parents” in this case had used an “anonymous egg donor.” So their claim as the biological parents of the child—all so that they could have the child aborted—grew even more shaky.

Encyclical on Human Life

2 posted on 03/09/2013 2:10:35 PM PST by NYer (Beware the man of a single book - St. Thomas Aquinas)
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To: NYer

Without the wisdom of God and fueling the wrath of God, to be executed by His Son.


3 posted on 03/09/2013 3:51:27 PM PST by huldah1776
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To: NYer

These animals were about to raise a child?! The thought of it sends a shiver down my spine. How could you hate a baby so much that you would spend $10,000 for no other reason than to so it killed?! They would have gained absolutely nothing but the satisfaction of killing! **** this might actually be purest evil I’ve ever heard about.

What if the child ever became disabled later in life?! It would probably be yet another case of severe brutality and neglect.


4 posted on 03/09/2013 4:01:00 PM PST by Wanderer99
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To: NYer

Maybe the Muslims should just go ahead and nuke us into oblivion...

we’re already too far gone as a nation.


5 posted on 03/09/2013 4:04:20 PM PST by Wanderer99
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To: huldah1776

The only consolation is the surviving kids are really going to despise these lunatic “parents”. They will get their just deserts in the form of a rebellious teenager haha! xD


6 posted on 03/09/2013 4:05:53 PM PST by Wanderer99
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To: huldah1776
I know that IVF parents may have generous intentions, but the very way they conceive the child is detrimental to the child's dignity, his right to be secure in the knoledge that he is the fruit of an act of love by his married mother and father --- which is the way it's supposed to be.

This case shows how far wrong it can go: with 5 (or maybe 6?) adults having some claim to be this little girl's parent --- that is, suing each other for the right to either let her live, or execute her.

A child is not a pet, an expensive lifestyle accessory or a science project.

For God's sake. I feel sorry for these children.

7 posted on 03/09/2013 5:58:35 PM PST by Mrs. Don-o (May the Lord bless you and keep you, may He turn to you His countenance and give you peace.)
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To: Wanderer99

LOL They’re having problems with kids who don’t know who their siblings are, too!


8 posted on 03/09/2013 8:23:47 PM PST by huldah1776
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To: Mrs. Don-o

Actually their intentions are completely selfish.


9 posted on 03/10/2013 12:01:19 AM PST by Eagles6 (Valley Forge Redux)
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To: Wanderer99

“It would probably be yet another case of severe brutality and neglect.”

This couple that could not have a child on their own. Some might say it is a failure of biology. I wonder if God knew what He was doing?


10 posted on 03/10/2013 12:07:27 AM PST by 21twelve ("We've got the guns, and we got the numbers" adapted and revised from Jim M.)
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To: Mrs. Don-o

Best case scenario: the child will discover the true insanity of this situation and learns to despise it with every fiber of her being

really bad scenario: she blames herself for being a failed lab experiment

worst case scenario: she thinks it’s all perfectly normal and applauds the lunatic who ‘won the game’

I have no idea what is going to become of this. It seems like there is nothing that any of us can do about this.


11 posted on 03/10/2013 5:55:11 AM PDT by Wanderer99
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