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Child of surrogacy campaigns to outlaw the practice
NY Post ^ | June 16, 2014 | Jane Ridley

Posted on 06/27/2014 10:09:29 AM PDT by Mrs. Don-o


Child of surrogacy campaigns to outlaw the practice Jessica Kern, a donor-conceived child, wants tighter controls over laws governing assisted reproduction.

When Jessica Kern gave evidence to lawmakers in Washington, DC, last summer opposing the legalization of surrogacy in the district, she was pointedly asked why she wasn’t grateful for the procedure that created her.

“The question was so simple and dismissive,” she recalls. “Like I would choose this for myself? When the only reason you’re in this world is a big fat paycheck, it’s degrading.”

Kern, 30, of Culpepper, Va. — the product of the old-fashioned, traditional method of “biological surrogacy” as opposed to “gestational surrogacy” — is among a number of donor-conceived children in the US who are campaigning for tighter controls on the law governing assisted reproduction.

“You can’t sell your kidney for profit but you can purchase an egg or sell a child,” she says. “There needs to be more checks and balances.

“Most of the consideration within surrogacy is toward the adults and what they want. Often, it’s not in the best interests of the children.”

Kern discovered the true story behind her birth after finding her medical records at the age of 17 which included details of the surrogacy arrangement.

“My biological mother was paid $10,000 for her services,” she says. “I was devastated.”

Kern, who is no longer in touch with her adoptive mother, tracked down her biological mother, but the two are now estranged because of her outspoken stance against surrogacy.

(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: commerciallife; eggsforsale; unnatural; wombforrent
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This is the heart of it: surrogacy, which splits up motherhood into three fragments --- genetic mother vs gestational mother vs legal mother --- was not designed with the rights or needs of the child in mind.

No child "needs" to have his/her identity divided up among 3 people (throw the sperm-vendor and the legal father in there, and you have 5.) No child "asks" to be the product of a laboratory procedure. No child "wants" to wonder about his natural kinship and his natural identity.

In short, it's not done with the needs, wants, or rights of the child at the center.

It is centered on the desires of adults, done to satisfy the new-reproductive-technology industry and the exigencies of the baby market.

This is wrong. It's just wrong-in-itself.

And this is not an argument against adoption, which is responding to the needs of a child who,after-the-fact, by some sad chance, cannot be raised by his natural parents, but needs a family. Adoption is an adaptation to the needs of an already-existing child.

Kids are deprived of their natural father and mother by tragedy, sad circumstance, or chance. No child should be deprived by choice.

1 posted on 06/27/2014 10:09:30 AM PDT by Mrs. Don-o
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To: Mrs. Don-o

So perfectly said.We need to listen to the people that it affects the most.Thank you for sharing this story.


2 posted on 06/27/2014 10:13:43 AM PDT by georgia peach (georgia peach)
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To: Mrs. Don-o
I was adopted, as was my younger brother. At birth. My parents' names are on my birth certificate. I've never had any need to search out my biological parents, I figure it was a guy going to Vietnam.

Of course I'm curious, but my parents were great, as I've said many times here.

As for surrogacy, I can't really say. I understand couples who can't have kids. Just adopt!

3 posted on 06/27/2014 10:32:02 AM PDT by real saxophonist (Shiny!)
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To: Mrs. Don-o

It sounds like people saying that abortion should be legal because the child wasn’t wanted.


4 posted on 06/27/2014 10:38:05 AM PDT by AppyPappy
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To: Mrs. Don-o

Bah- loney. Your parent is the person who parented you. Parenting is a verb. A guy who has an orgasm in the back seat of a car or in a clinic to conceive you isn’t a daddy. A woman who donated some eggs in college isn’t a mommy.

Your only parents are those who love and cherish and raise you. If the people who raised you were cruel to you, even they don’t deserve the title of parents. LONG LIVE ACTUAL PARENTS. They love, they work, they ache, they’d take a bullet for you.

Genetics is just a parlor trick. No difference between children of your genes or adopted etc. Anyone who has had at least one genetic child and one no genetic child knows this. There is no difference.

Anyone here on FR want to rip into adoptive parents????? Bring it. This girl is stupid. Adoptive parents do often have to pay significant money to adopt. DOES THST MAKE THEM LESS OF PARENTS???? People who want to have children and are good parents deserve praise. This little chick doesn’t get it yet. She is at that age where she just finds things about her past to blame on her parents. Common.


5 posted on 06/27/2014 10:45:52 AM PDT by Yaelle
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To: Yaelle

I tend to agree with you. Not to say that surrogacy, test tube babies, etc, don’t raise some ethical, moral, and social questions, but this young woman is being just plain disrespectful to her parents - the ones (or one?) who raised her. Was she well taken care of? Loved? Then I don’t know what she’s really complaining about (again, not discounting the real issues raised by modern reproductive technologies). The importance of the biological link is often overstated, IMO.

The courts seem to disagree, though, as several decisions have stated that a man who is a sperm donor (or presumably a woman who is an egg donor, if they’re being consistent and fair, if that’s not too much to expect from the law) can be held liable for support of the children created through the use of their donation. THAT should have a chilling effect on sperm donation, anyway.


6 posted on 06/27/2014 11:25:28 AM PDT by -YYZ- (Strong like bull, smart like tractor.)
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To: Mrs. Don-o

“Most of the consideration within surrogacy is toward the adults and what they want. Often, it’s not in the best interests of the children.”

<><><

Without the surrogacy, this child would not exist. I she thinking she would have been better off never having been born?

When 2 people have a child the ‘normal’ way, is not the same true, that it is about what the adults want?


7 posted on 06/27/2014 11:38:32 AM PDT by dmz
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To: Yaelle

Agree completely, well said.


8 posted on 06/27/2014 12:42:44 PM PDT by free me
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To: AppyPappy
"Abortion should be legal because the child wasn’t wanted" ...

...was always a bogus argument. Because somebody wants the child. Adoptive parents want the child. Grandma wants the child. A child wants his own self: that counts too, doesn't it? And Almighty God wants the child.

Adoption is good, because what impels it is the need of the child who is in a sad or tragic situation of not having his own natural mother and father.

Surrogacy is wrong because it creates the situation of a child not having his own natural mother and father. Surrogacy deliberately and by plan creates a child in a state of orphanhood; or, even if it's using the sperm of the legal father and the ovum of the legal mother, through the rented body of the hired gestational "unit," it's not orphanhood but it's predicated on fractured motherhood.

Feminists used to insist that a woman can't be just a baby-making machine. What are they saying now?

9 posted on 06/27/2014 1:06:45 PM PDT by Mrs. Don-o ("God bless the child who's got his own." Arthur Herzog Jr. / Billie Holiday)
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To: Mrs. Don-o
“The question was so simple and dismissive,” she recalls. “Like I would choose this for myself? When the only reason you’re in this world is a big fat paycheck, it’s degrading.”

How many people only exist because of a big fat beer (or six)? Why is that less degrading than being wanted and paid for because of medical problems? I am not a big fan of surrogacy, although I find it hard to explain why I don't like it, but her excuse strikes me as impressively stupid.

10 posted on 06/27/2014 1:28:11 PM PDT by Pollster1 ("Shall not be infringed" is unambiguous.)
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To: Yaelle
I hear ya, Yaelle, but you are refuting arguments that have not been made, at least not in this article and not by me.

"Your parent is the person who parented you. Parenting is a verb. A guy who has an orgasm in the back seat of a car or in a clinic to conceive you isn’t a daddy. A woman who donated some eggs in college isn’t a mommy."

Nobody denies that the person by whom you were parented (verb) is your parent. The point is that an adoptive parent is quite different from --- quite opposite to --- a person who contracts for surrogacy.

An adoptive parent is responding to the need of a child whose parents are dead, or incapacitated, or irresponsible adolescents quite unwilling or unable to take on adult responsibilities, or in prison, or AWOL in parts unknown. The child has a need, his natural parents cannot or will not fulfill it, and therefore he is in an objectively, and widely-acknwowledged, damaged and needy situation. He needs a mom and dad.

The adoptive parents, good and compassionate, step in to fill that void as best they can, and this is defined by "what the child needs." It is centered on restoring, as far as possible, a full childhood.

(Don-o and I are adoptive parents --- our older son is home-grown genetic, our younger one adopted --- and we understand fully that we are both of our sons' mom and dad. Period. Over the years, I have come to know a surprising number of FReepers who are adoptive parents, and they are always praised and never blamed, BY ANYBODY. There is no anti-adoption caucus here.)

But in contrast, a person who makes a surrogacy plan, is not in the position of responding to the needs of a child who is sadly bereft of his mom and dad: they are MAKING him bereft of his mom and/or dad. They planned it that way. The lack of his natural parent(s) is not a glitch: it's a feature.

If the natural parents were ready, willing and able to take and raise their child, that would not be seen as a moral victory, it would be a commercial breach or contract.

Analogy: say a child gets his leg crushed in a traffic accident. It's so bad it can't be fixed, so it's amputated. At some point his parents can arrange for him to get a prosthetic leg and foot. They are responding to his need. Sure, the leg isn't his "natural" leg, but it's the best you can do, since his "natural" leg isn't there anymore. This is love! This is nurture! This is doing as well for him as you can.

BUT: say you have a different plan: you deliberately maim a boy in utero, and intentionally cause him to be born without a leg. If you then get him a prosthetic --- I mean, great, you got him a leg; maybe he'll grow up having no complaints about the prosthetic; but you shouldn't have planned on inflicting that maiming on him in the first place.

There is a difference between responding to a motherless or fatherless child; and deliberately de-motherating and de-fatherating a child.

Elton John said in an interview that his surrogate-born son wouldn't ever know his natural mother [Right, Elton, that's part of the contract!) --- but he and his sodomite "husband" are going to buy another baby--- maybe from the same woman, who knows? --- so their little lifestle accessory boy can have a little brother to play with.

Isn't it sweet?

11 posted on 06/27/2014 3:14:06 PM PDT by Mrs. Don-o ("God bless the child who's got his own." Arthur Herzog Jr. / Billie Holiday)
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To: Pollster1; free me; XYZ; dmz; AppyPappy

12 posted on 06/27/2014 3:19:01 PM PDT by Mrs. Don-o ("God bless the child who's got his own." Arthur Herzog Jr. / Billie Holiday)
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To: Mrs. Don-o

The child still has a mother and father....obviously.


13 posted on 06/27/2014 3:46:26 PM PDT by AppyPappy
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To: AppyPappy
Oh, at least. The numbers could really climb, though:And what if the gal who actually gave birth shows up? A restraining order should prevent that from happening. She's not a mother, she's not even a person, she's a breeder unit.

Life can be tangled enough on its own. You don't have to deliberately create a wad of legal, biological and relational knots, snippets, chopped-off bonds and tangles, exclude natural parents by contract, and say "Well, at least you're alive."

If a couple wants a kid and can't have them the normal way, they should adopt some kids. There are tens of thousands out there. We were lucky to get one. It's a real crime that the system makes it so hard to adopt.

Unless, of course, you're gay.

14 posted on 06/27/2014 4:40:29 PM PDT by Mrs. Don-o (Really.)
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To: Mrs. Don-o

“There are tens of thousands out there. “

Ummm...no. That’s why people have to go overseas to get them.


15 posted on 06/27/2014 4:41:40 PM PDT by AppyPappy
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To: AppyPappy
Yes, we went overseas: Don-o went to Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskiy, which is pert'neat on the opposite earth-diameter from Upper East Tennessee.

That's why I said it's a crime how hard they make it to adopt kids --- in America. We tried. The most and frustrating we've ever been through. Finally we lucked out/ were blessed by Divine Providence and ran into an old friend who just happened to be starting her own agency to facilitate Russian adoptions. This was 17 years ago. And the cost? I always say "The same as new vinyl siding and windows, and a roof."

16 posted on 06/27/2014 4:49:51 PM PDT by Mrs. Don-o (Really.)
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To: Mrs. Don-o

One of my children is from adopted or donated embryo. To me, it is same as adopting, once there is an actual child on the way. So I definitely see the good in third party parenting for personal reasons, though like your child, my little embryo was “needy” and we are giving her a normal childhood.


17 posted on 06/28/2014 1:43:21 AM PDT by Yaelle
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To: Yaelle

See #3


18 posted on 06/28/2014 4:28:11 AM PDT by real saxophonist (Shiny!)
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To: Mrs. Don-o

It’s Culpeper, not Culpepper.


19 posted on 06/28/2014 4:35:46 AM PDT by real saxophonist (Shiny!)
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To: Mrs. Don-o

Methinks this woman doth complain too much.


20 posted on 06/28/2014 5:16:06 AM PDT by PLMerite (Shut the Beyotch Down! Burn, baby, burn!)
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