Wombs for Rent: Reproductive Exploitation

Breakpoint with Chuck Colson ^ | 1/14/2008 | Chuck Colson

[Mr. Silverback]

Note: The following commentary contains sensitive information that may not be suitable for children.

Ordinarily, columnist Judith Warner of the New York Times is not exactly what you would call a friend of the Christian worldview. Yet from her opposing viewpoint, Warner recently came up with a devastating critique of surrogate motherhood. She drives home exactly what we have been saying on this program for some time now: that we are turning children into commodities, which is harmful to everyone involved.

In this case, Warner focuses a much-needed spotlight on the role of poor women in India who are being paid to act as surrogate mothers on behalf of childless Americans. She writes, “Images of pregnant women lying in rows, or sitting lined up, belly after belly, for medical exams look like industrial outsourcing pushed to a nightmarish extreme.”

That’s an image that would make anyone uncomfortable. But why should it? On the surface, everybody benefits from the situation. The wealthy but childless Americans get the babies they have longed for; the Indian women get the money they need. As one such woman, Nandani Patel, told NPR, the money she was paid for being a surrogate mother enabled her and her husband to buy a house that they never could have afforded otherwise.

Then why does the concept of surrogacy cause such revulsion in Warner and others? Warner herself has a difficult time explaining it. Our feelings and ethics related to the subject, she writes, are “murky, ambiguous and confused.”

I would submit that the reason for the revulsion is that we cannot get away from the law written on our hearts, which tells us that the Creator has an intentional design for our families that benefits and protects men, women, and children.

And when we deliberately try to circumvent that design, the frightening truth is that we end up using people: men for their sperm, women for their eggs or their body parts. And sadly, we even use the resulting children for our own gratification. If you doubt it, remember what I said recently about a process called selective reduction. That is a procedure where, as author Liza Mundy described, mothers who were desperate for children actually lie there and watch on a screen while one or more of their implanted embryos are selected out and killed! People want children, yes, but they want them on their own terms.

So as Judith Warner says, the discomfort and confusion that surround surrogacy serve a purpose. They remind us “that there is more to the process of carrying a baby and giving birth to it than being an incubator on legs.” No amount of money or “empowerment” that surrogacy brings to women in need can erase that fundamental truth.

When Warner argues for improving adoption procedures and living conditions for women around the world instead of renting out wombs, she is actually touching on a basic tenet of the Christian worldview, whether she recognizes it or not.

That tenet is that every human life has value and dignity—not because we can use that life to satisfy a need or desire, but because the Creator of all life made us in His image and values us beyond all comprehension.

[Mrs. Don-o]

But all too many people's judgment of the situation would be based on the protagonists' "class" identity.

I think that a good many liberals on the Marin-Manhattan axis, as well as right-wing libertarians right here in FReeperland, would think reproductive concubinage grotesque if done by the fictional Biblical theocrats, but perfectly unimpeachable -- sanctified by "market values" and "choice" --- if done by Yuppies a little past their reproductive prime.

[Mr. Silverback]

I think you’re 100% correct in that assessment.

[Mr. Silverback]

Right before Christmas, I had “I’m Getting Nothing For Christmas” stuck in my head for several days...

Oh my...that's absolutely horrible! My wife and I have a joke that the worst non-lethal thing that can happen to a human is getting the song "Everybody Wants Something" from the Degrassi Junior High TV series stuck in your head. The worst is when you get a song stuck in your head that you only know some of the lyrics to, so your brain just "plays" that short portion over and over. It's a killer.

BTW, my wife claims that if you think of the song "Private Dancer" by Tina Turner it will chase a looped song out of your head. Give it a try.

[MEGoody]

Then why does the concept of surrogacy cause such revulsion in Warner and others?

Because there are plenty of babies in the world who need good homes.

[Mr. Silverback]

I think you and Colson are both right...yours is the head and heart reason and his is the soul reason.

[colorado tanker]

A few years ago I met a woman who was doing this not for pay but because she enjoyed motherhood and was a friend of the couple.

A healthy girl was born. Of course, it didn't take long for the couple to divorce. The "mom" was an uninvolved mother who had an affair with her personal trainer. I think the kid was just another possession she wanted, out of many. Fortunately, she did have a father who loved her.

[Mrs. Don-o]

One powerful effect of conceiving a child in a physical intimate union with your spouse, and carrying the child for 9 months in your womb, and nursing the child at the breast, is that it utilizes and maximizes the personal resources of the whole female body-mind-soul in creating mother-child attachment.

And you know what? Children and mothers both benefit profoundly from this attachment. It tends to keep wives with husbands (because of the mutual interdependence that's fostered during the wife's pregnancy and nursing months) and mothers with children.

The physical experiences and instincts aroused by loving intercourse, carrying, giving birth, and nursing are directly tied into the attainment of optimal attachment and bonding.

There was a time when everybody knew this. Now people act like it's a new and controversial perspective.

[colorado tanker]

In the case I was referring to, the wife could not carry a pregnancy but was fertile, she had eggs that could be harvested.

Of course, as an adoptive parent I don't really understand why people would get tangled up in this rather than adopt.

Oh, maybe I do. When you work through infertility treatment, there always seems to be one more drug or procedure to try that just might work after the preceding failures. It gets to be very seductive, if not addictive.

[Mrs. Don-o]

Colorado, I know you've had experiences (and some frustration) with Artificial Reproduction Tecnologies, right? And ended up adopting?

What "gets" me is that a lot of people with fertility problems don't need Artificial Reproductive Technologies at all. IVF usually involves wasted embryos, AID (insemination by donor) involves third party genetics, hyper-ovulation involves the extremely risky business of conceiving high-order multiples. On the other hand, REAL therapies that actually HEAL the physical causes of marital infertility, like NaProTechnology (NPT) restore natural sexual procreation and thus do not incur those problems.

When you're looking at proposed therapies on a case-by-case basis, this is the question to ask: does this heal the physical causes of marital fertility and restore natural sexual procreation? OR does it give up on healing and instead substitute some non-marital, non-sexual process for the marital relation?

In many cases of infertility, the would-be mother and father are both technically fertile (they produce normal ova and sperm and could conceive via intercourse) but

A true therapy would have found a way to optimize natural fertility (often by addressing nutritional and hormonal preconditions, or by fine-tuning the pattern of sexual behavior) so as to preserve true marital procreation --- instead of substituting another man as the genetic father or intruding laboratory procedures into the relationship.

Actually treating the couple's marital fertility problem is preferable to cutting out the genetic contribution of one marriage partner, or taking lovemaking out of the equation.

Renee Mirkes, the director of the Center for NaPro Ethics, reports that "in the long run, NPT is 1.5 to 3.5 times more effective in achieving conception than conventional IVF treatment."

And it restores the fertility that the married partners jointly have, without the enormous expense of ART and without the emotional, social, and psychological costs.

Here's a second highly informative link on NaProTechnology for healing of natural fertility.

Maybe this won't be useful for you, but prayerfully it will be useful for somebody reading this thread.

[colorado tanker]

Maybe this won't be useful for you, but prayerfully it will be useful for somebody reading this thread.

I truly love being an adoptive parent, but my youngest (of four) is now in third grade and I'm done with diapers. :-))

[Mrs. Don-o]

I hear ya!

[Mr. Silverback]

Of course, as an adoptive parent I don't really understand why people would get tangled up in this rather than adopt.

Me either.

[Mr. Silverback]

Not long after my youngest was potty trained, it suddenly occurred to me that I had been changing diapers every day for seven years.

Dang!

[colorado tanker]

:-))

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[Viking2002]

Yes, but is is it a womb with a view? :-)

[Das Outsider]

She writes, “Images of pregnant women lying in rows, or sitting lined up, belly after belly, for medical exams look like industrial outsourcing pushed to a nightmarish extreme.”

So we've even outsourced birth to India?