A gay Canadian couple is suing the surrogate mother of their child after she refused to abort the baby following a 22-week ultrasound that discovered the child had a cleft lip.
The two unnamed Canadian men entered into a gestational surrogacy arrangement using a donor egg and IVF. At approximately 22 weeks, an ultrasound revealed that the baby had a cleft lip, with concerns about a possible cleft palate and minor heart abnormality. The couple subsequently requested that the pregnancy be terminated. Their written request invoked Article 8.5(a) of the surrogacy agreement, citing medical tests indicating that the baby had, or was likely to have, a “genetic, chromosomal or other abnormality or defect.” The surrogate mother refused. She felt that a cleft lip was in no way a legitimate reason to end the life of the child she was carrying. Further evaluation at Mount Sinai Hospital reportedly found the baby generally healthy beyond the cleft lip. Modern medicine and reconstructive surgery have become remarkably adept at treating cleft lips.
And here, two years after the child was born, the couple is suing her for damages she says could reach $600,000. The lawsuit itself alleges a number of breaches involving medical decisions, communication, confidentiality, the circumstances surrounding the birth, and emotional distress. But the surrogate believes the lawsuit is punitive action stemming from her refusal to abort. She has been blunt about how she views what happened: “They didn’t get the perfect child they wanted and they threw me away.”
Every once in a while, Western society gets a wake-up call. A splash of cold water to the face. This is one of those moments.
In what kind of world does a physical abnormality constitute killing and ending a life? How did we get to a place where a same-sex couple, biologically incapable of producing a child together, can order a child through a system legally sanctioned and protected by their government, and then decide whether the life they ordered was suitable enough for their liking? When did children become a commodity? Who is responsible for drawing these moral lines in the sand? How did we get here in Western culture?
But morals aside, there was a contract. The process of receiving a fertilized egg into her womb involved doctors, procedures, expenses, lawyers, agreements, and signatures on dotted lines. It was an arrangement specifically designed to create a human life, and the contract contemplated what would happen if that life wasn’t what the intended parents expected. It takes moments like this for the world to stop and think about the society we are creating. Some people support her decision to refuse to abort the child, contracts be damned. Others are left to wrestle with the notion that a legally binding piece of paper gives someone the right to extinguish life in another.
A comparison to the practice of slavery should come to mind. There was a time in the West when pieces of legal paper claimed to give one man bodily authority over the life of another. Today we look back at that world and wonder how civilized people could possibly believe that a contract, law, or bill of ownership could make something so obviously immoral morally legitimate. Are we really as progressive and morally elevated as the generations that came before us? And what ultimately helped lift the evil of slavery from Western society? Was it technological progress? Was it simply the rising tide of cultural progression? Again, no. It was, in no small part, the salt and light of the world, the Church, and men and women who were unwilling to remain silent while laws and legal documents gave one human being bodily authority over the life of another.
As we have seen in the foundation of the pro-choice worldview, value is synonymous with a life that is wanted. If a human life is wanted, value is attributed to that individual, but if a person is less wanted or no longer wanted in the construct of that society, that life no longer has value. This is exactly why the pro-life movement has historically likened abortion to the Holocaust and other atrocities throughout history. When people of power and influence are allowed to arbitrarily draw the lines of who is wanted and who is not, the value of life rests in the hands of the powerful.
This is the linchpin of the pro-choice and pro-life argument. Not whether that 22-week-old baby was human. It’s whether that 22-week-old baby was deemed wanted. Wanted or unwanted. Fit or unfit. This is the language Margaret Sanger used as she built her worldview and laid the foundation for what would eventually become Planned Parenthood. It is the same eugenic worldview that crossed the Atlantic and found fertile ground in Nazi Germany, where the categorization of human beings as fit or unfit, worthy or unworthy, ultimately reached its horrific conclusion in the Final Solution. Who gets to decide which lives are worth living?
Think about that kid. One day learning that not only did his gay parents decide they didn’t want him, but that they sued the surrogate mother who protected him. We know the emotional toll that so many abortion survivors have described, the visceral and deeply embedded reality of discovering that the very people who are supposed to above all be their loving protectors once deemed them unwanted and deserving of death. We hear these stories every day. It would be almost impossible for this boy to reach his teenage years without discovering the facts surrounding his birth and this lawsuit. These are wounds to the soul that only Jesus can heal, but why are we subjecting the most innocent and vulnerable among us to potential lifelong trauma in order to satisfy the desires of adults?
God gave mothers an instinct to protect life. Something rose up in that woman when she was told to abort. One of the more thought-provoking facts about this lawsuit is that the surrogate mother was actually pro-choice. This wasn’t a pro-life activist entering into this arrangement determined to resist abortion. She knowingly rented her body to become a surrogate to a pair of men who biologically had no ability to produce a child together. And when it came to the life of the child she was growing inside of her, she still existed within a worldview that said it was her right to choose between life or death, until she decided to choose life and discovered that being on the fence about this issue had unknowingly put her into the camp of a culture that loves death.
And remember what all of this was over. There was nothing life-threatening or terminal going on with the baby. He had a cleft lip. The couple got the news that the child they had gone to extraordinary lengths to create was going to have a wrinkle, and their solution was to terminate the child. One small challenge in the most vulnerable stage of that child’s life and they were already over their limit of care, compassion, and love. When the inevitable challenges of parenthood come knocking on their door, do we really need to wonder what their inclination will be?
Yes, we know it’s “evil” and “bigoted” to question or oppose the practice of giving same-sex couples legal access to surrogacy, but in spotlight moments like this, what our guts tell us is clearly confirmed. But who in society is going to be the voice that pushes back on moral issues like this? The government? Politicians? The IVF industry? The abortion industry? These are massive industries with billions of dollars flowing through the fertility and reproductive-health economy, made increasingly available as the culture slides further into decay.
No. The Church is the moral conscience of Western society, and if we remain quiet, there is no other guardrail keeping innocent lives protected.
The Church must realize that we are the line in the sand. As our culture slides further into moral chaos, we don’t have the luxury of remaining quiet while we wait for politicians, courts, or institutions to rediscover the truth. We have to speak it. We have to defend it. We have to stand for the innocent and vulnerable when no one else will.
And we should understand that speaking plainly will come with a cost. A culture that has rejected a Biblical worldview will not always celebrate Christians who refuse to go along with it. There will be social pressure to soften our convictions, keep uncomfortable truths to ourselves, and quietly accept whatever the culture decides is progress. But we cannot be silent. The Church must stand for truth, no matter the cost.
Because if we won’t draw the line, who will?
This case is just one example of a much bigger problem. If you want to understand the moral questions surrounding surrogacy, IVF, and a culture increasingly treating children as commodities, watch Seth’s full episode on surrogacy.
