Reader Poll: “Women: Would you consider being a surrogate mother for an adult child or other family member?”

Here’s the question we asked UFI readers:

“Women: Would you consider being a surrogate mother for an adult child or other family member?”

Here’s how readers responded:

16 percent       “Yes”

65 percent       “No Way”

19 percent       “Uncertain”

This question was asked in the quake of a slate of news reports of women being surrogate moms for their own children or other family members.  In other words, some of these women carried their own grandchildren to term.  (You can see some of those stories linked below.)  Based on the poll response, it appears that the vast majority of our female readers had no interest in that. 

We should probably clarify that there is a difference between being a “gestational carrier” (the pregnant woman’s egg was not used) and a “surrogate mother” where the pregnant woman contributed her own egg.  Perhaps that understanding would have made a difference in the response.

Artificial Reproductive Technology (ART) including In vitro Fertilization (IVF) is fraught with many ethical questions.  ART has been used over the decades to bring children to married couples who were unable to have their own children – a wonderful thing.  They have also been used to rob children of both a mother and a father – as is the case when homosexual couples and single moms utilized the technology.  These technologies have also paved the path for indiscriminate destruction of human embryos.

Click Here and scroll to the bottom of the page to cast your vote on our current poll question!

Woman delivers grandchild after daughter’s fight with cervical cancer

Woman gives birth to her own grandchildren

Carrying these babies for my brother

 

 

Wrong Elton, your son does have a mummy

Ann Bailey

In a candid moment that surprised not a few gay advocates, singer Elton John has acknowledged that it will be “heartbreaking” when the boy being raised by him and his gay partner grows and realizes “he hasn’t got a mummy.”  Elton certainly has broken away from gay orthodoxy with his statement– actually acknowledging that it might be important for a child to have both a mother and a father – blasphemous!

Elton’s 13-month old son was born via a surrogate (not the biological mother), a donated egg and a mixture of sperm from Elton and his partner (so they could both think it was their child).  What you have is a complicated mix of parentage and confusing identify that will reverberate throughout the child’s life.

Elton is definitely wrong; the child does have a mother (just as every human being ever born has one).  Elton just chose to make sure that the child will never know the woman nor enjoy all the crucial things that having his mother in his life could give him.  And that’s a problem!

We have volumes of research citing what occurs to children who are robbed of either their mother or their father – they need both!   Enough years have passed that there is also a growing body of research on outcomes for children born of artificial reproductive technologies (ART).  One of the most-often referred to studies is entitled: “My Daddy’s Name is Donor,” which gives a glimpse into the minds and hearts of children born via these unnatural relationships.

Here’s a sampling of findings from this study:

1. Young adults who are donor offspring experience profound struggles with their origins and identities.
2. Family relationships for donor offspring are more often characterized by confusion, tension, and loss.
3. Donor offspring often worry about the implications of interacting with – and possibly forming intimate relationships with – unknown, blood-related family members.
4. Donor offspring are more likely to have experienced divorce or multiple family transitions in their families of origin.     (You can go here to see more.)

Here’s the bottom line:

“Donor offspring are significantly more likely than those raised by their biological parents to struggle with serious, negative outcomes such as delinquency, substance abuse, and depression, even when controlling for socio-economic and other factors.”

Elton so enjoys his young son that he is considering repeating the process to have another child.   Elton’s comment implies that he knows that mothers matter, but he chooses to ignore what his child (any child!) might need.   It’s what I’ve always argued; the push for gay adoption and the use of artificial reproductive technologies for homosexual couples, (or for single heterosexuals – most often women) is all about meeting adult needs – not about the needs of a child.  Sad, sad, sad…

A Child is Not a Trophy – nor an option for life-fulfillment

Ann Bailey

In the post-father’s day review of the news, I came across one article that demands some comment.  “The Gift of Being Gay and a Dad” (The New York Times) chronicles a gay man’s feelings on believing that he would never be able to have a child:

“It was the thing that broke my heart: the feeling that by coming out, I was giving up the one thing I had always wanted since I was a kid – more than any profession or any pursuit – being a dad…  I believed that building a family and leaving children as a legacy would be my best-lived life.”

The author writes a touching piece about his joy at being able to use reproductive technology to obtain not one baby, but two – both boys.  “And our boys are the best part of our lives. They are our little miracles,” he states.

I can understand the emotional upheaval that would come from never having children.  As a heterosexual, that is the part of same-sex behavior that elicits the most thought and compassion from me regarding those who experience same-sex attraction.  Yet as I read the well-written article my brain was screaming: “What about the child!?”

As wonderful as it may be for this gay man to now have his life’s dream fulfilled, what about the two boys who were intentionally stripped of their mother?  Is this just about adult need?  What about the children who won’t have their very real needs met – the need to know and be reared by the two people who created them?  Children want their mother and their father – a very simple concept.

Psychologists have coined the term “genealogical bewilderment,” which attempts to describe the feelings that come from not being reared by or from having little information about both of your biological parents. Common sense would tell you that children have a deep longing to know where they come from, who they look like, who they belong to. Children have a deep longing to know the missing other half of them.

What about the confusion that surely must be a part of these young boy’s lives?  (I’m not just talking about growing up in a home with two daddies.) There is some excellent work and research being done on surrogacy and the impact of reproductive technologies on donor-conceived children.  Thankfully, the conversation is growing.

You’ll notice that I haven’t even touched on the issue of gay-parenting, a topic that has received wide-coverage recently.  That is a topic for another post.

Legal expert J.C. von Krempach explains the situation this way:

The novel concept of “same-sex families” is thus a legal artifice in which the natural bond between parents and children is substituted by legal acts (such as adoption) or technical manipulations (such as the artificial insemination of a lesbian woman with a donor’s semen). This difference is what lies at the heart of the debate around the novel concept of “families”.

[T]he LGBT lobby uses human rights vocabulary to fight against human rights, notably those of the children who, as victims of gay adoption, are turned into some kind of commodity for gays and lesbians wishing to play “family”.

For the record, heterosexuals were instrumental in developing and using the technology that created this mess and homosexuals aren’t the only ones that are violating children’s rights to know and be reared by both of their parents.  Nor can we ignore the astronomically high rates of unmarried child bearing, single parent homes and the continued high rate of divorce. All create hardship and dismal outcomes for children.

Bottom line:  Children aren’t some type of trophy or prize – nor are they to be obtained to round out one’s life and bring fulfillment of some kind.  Children need their father and their mother together for the duration.  It is their right and their desperate need.  This article is just one more example of children’s needs taking a back seat to adults’.  It needs to stop.