It’s a busy season so I don’t have time to give the treatment I’d like to the front page story in yesterday’s Post about a surrogate mom carrying a baby who the parents wanted to abort due to health problems (eugenics alert). When the surrogate refused, the parents sent a legal letter demanding she abort. I assume that we are hearing about the case because the parents are continuing to pursue a legal case against the surrogate; this bold woman actually picked up and moved to a state where she’d have more rights as the surrogate mother to not abort the baby she was carrying.
So many things wrong here, starting with the idea that we can do perfect strangers the favour of carrying a baby for them, without there being repercussions. But the problems all go back, in my mind, to the abortion-friendly culture and the manner in which people are disposable. I want a baby; but not a baby like that. For all the rhetoric of the parents in the article saying they didn’t want a baby to be born and suffer through health problems, their desire for abortion was not compassion. They didn’t want to care for a child like that, since we can hardly assume what the feelings of those who are sick and disabled are. We don’t get to choose the level of health we, or our children, will have. The choice mentality gets punctured pretty quickly in the real world–and yet the rhetoric is so rampant that it actually surprises some when they realize that some things are not a choice.
by 
When consumerism has been accepted as culture everything is out the window except; `what I want when I want`. Everything is choice. Buying babies is like buying any other item. Which model and features are to be considered and freely so. Any objection to a selection is verboten. And now enters the Big picture and a snag to `what I want when I want`. Some things are actually not allowed. Some objections and in some cases, some assertions, are not allowed. The Supreme Court of Canada is involved in deciding which speech is free and which is not. How can there be free speech when speech is reviewed to see if it can be uttered. Free Speech is dead when some decide what others may say.
You have to wonder what would happen if the baby had no problems, was born, but then developed major health problems after birth?
Of course you take a chance when you have a baby, that it will have medical problems. But all of us are possible medical emergencies and problems somewhere down the road. It just may not happen at birth.
Pope John Paul II called it the “culture of life” for a reason – meaning an openness to life in all its bits, both beautiful and ugly. There is so much that we don’t get to choose in life, and the surrogacy problem illustrates so well our unwillingness to suffer.
I don’t have children. But in my life, some of the most tragic moments have been accompanied by the greatest learning, which has brought with it a sort of peace that I can’t quite describe. Particularly when I was willing and able to embrace the sadness, as it were. How sad then, that we are busy sanitizing these difficult moments out of our lives, popping pills and aborting lives, to keep a tight lid on everything.
This makes me cry. Hasn’t anyone ever read Forrest Gump?
As a parent of four, I can tell you that there are no guarantees. My fourth pregnancy was uneventful, and resulted in a perfectly-formed, beautiful son. However, there is no pre-natal test for autism, and it doesn’t really show symptoms for quite some time after birth. My son is low-functioning autistic with significant developmental delays, and will be fully dependent on others for his whole life. What I am trying to say is that you don’t know how things will turn out, even if you have a perfect, healthy baby. All you can do is love the child you DO have, not mourn the child you wanted. And maybe learn something from that child along the way….
Great comment Jan.