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A surrogacy arrangement doesn't incline so much toward a parent-child relationship, as a customer-product relationship. You pays your money and you takes your choice. The customer is always right. It scares me to think what's going to happen to these poor kids ("products") when they show themselves to be insufficiently cute or insufficiently smart, or just generally fail to provide the hoped-for level of customer satisfaction.

I remember reading an article years ago in a newspaper published in Howard County, MD (a rather wealthy county which includes the "planned community" of Columbia, MD) about the rate of child abuse in Howard County, which exceeded that of most other counties in MD.

Turns out that child abuse is not only associated with such low-class behaviors as out-of-wedlock unplanned pregnancy, single-parenting, welfare, etc. It's also associated with wealthy, control-freak parents who demand a planned, perfect and privileged child, and who freak out when the kid acts like a kid, i.e. imperfect.

If you've spent $40,000 on an in-vitro-plus-surrogacy exotic import custom designed baby, you're likely going to have sky-high standards for customer satisfaction. If he turns out to be just an average kid, you may feel a little defrauded. If he cries and gets snot running out of his nose, you may feel definitely ripped off, investment-wise. And if he dribbles his organic pomegranate smoothie all over your $18,000 Versace Blue Barocco Velvet on Silver Leaf Sofa Set, you may just grab him by the neck and throw him against a wall.

It happens.

I'm not saying that never happens to a natural-begotten baby. I am saying that obtaining your child in a commercial transaction will tend to heighten the perception that he's something you acquired to satisfy your needs. And that's a dangerous state of affairs.

I am convinced that God designed natural marital sexual love, pregnancy, childbirth and nursing to maximize the instinctual bonding and personal, intimate, bodily attachment between a mother and her child. Deliberately designing a new physical paradigm of motherhood (e.g. surrogacy) violates the wholeness God intended, and deprives the child of the natural protections God designed.