Child of surrogacy campaigns to outlaw the practice

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.

I think that the moral objections against IVF and surrogacy arguably do NOT apply in the situation of prenatal adoption of an embryo stranded in cryo-suspension and in danger, otherwise, of death. This is a rescue.

Where a person is prenatally adopting an already-created, already-at-risk embryo, this is a good thing, exactly because it is responding to the needs of an already-existing child who would perish otherwise.

From that perspectoive, it is like adopting a 3-year-old --- even more exact;ly, a medically-endangered 3-year-old --- who needs special procedures in order to survive, into a family that is willing and able to supply those procedures. Say, a kid who needs kidney surgery.

So your case -- embryo adoption --- is different in a crucial aspect: it does not deliberately "create the need."

Laboratory embryo-creating and embryo-freezing itself should be banned, because (among other reasons) it results in the creation of offspring that are absolutely stranded, and can be abandoned or disposed of at will. That was the upshot of the Marysville TN court case, which ruled that embryos are property, not people.

No part of the argument against IVF/surrogacy, is an argument against adoption. Adoption is a just and generous response to the needs of an already-existing child.

It is not paying for a child be to created and handed over for you per a commercial contract.

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

I don’t think it’s as distasteful as when rich celebrities go shopping for “fashion accessory” children in the third world. I also don’t think using a surrogate to carry an IVF embryo of one or both of the “adoptive” parents is bad, either. This woman wouldn’t exist otherwise, so without knowing all the sordid details and thought processes of the parents myself, IMHO she should just STFU and enjoy being alive. It’s an opportunity about a million kids a year don’t get.

There are dozens of ways that a pregnancy might come about, that we can frankly call wrongful, without in the least implying that the resulting born child shouldn't exist. Nobody is wishing a child away.

Yet consider that children get conceived by:

drunken one-nighter
forcible rape
seduction
sexual assault on a minor
incest
drugged intercourse
stupid move by horny teenagers
selfish adulterous fling
prostitution
baby-selling scheme

and surrogacy is one of those wrongful acts. It is akin to prostitution ---gestational surrogate selling (leasing) her body --- and baby-selling, which is a form of human trafficking. We can deplore this, even want to legally curb it, without slighting the human dignity of the child in the least.

In fact, it's because of our sense of the dignity of a child's life, that we don't want reproductive prostitution and baby-selling to be accepted in our society.

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