In mid-January, singer Meghan Trainor and her husband, actor Daryl Sabara, welcomed their third child, a girl, into the world. The baby arrived in a nontraditional way, via surrogate. Surrogacy, especially for wealthy or celebrity couples, is not unheard of. In fact, the entire surrogacy industry has expanded in recent years. This is due to several factors, including rising parental age and more LGBT couples, among other things. From a pro-life perspective, increasing the fertility rate is a good thing. We need more babies and families. But the ethical concerns associated with surrogacy should give us great pause.
Most of the time, the pro-life focus is on abortion. Destroying unborn life in the womb is an evil that not only exists but unfortunately thrives even in post-Dobbs America. With in vitro fertilization and surrogacy, the goals are positive. The focus is on a successful pregnancy. But both are still problematic because of the human cost and parental loss associated with each case.
It can be hard to discuss the dangers of these nontraditional routes to building a family because the topic is so sensitive. But it is important to be honest about what each entails. It impacts the children involved and shapes how society as a whole views reproduction and even individual, inherent worth.
There are two types of surrogacy: traditional and gestational. With the first, the surrogate donates her egg, which is joined with the father’s sperm via IUI, or intrauterine insemination. The surrogate is the legal mother until parental rights are terminated. With gestational, IVF occurs first, and the embryo is placed in the surrogate to carry. She does not have parental rights. In both these scenarios, a woman carries a child through all stages of pregnancy and then gives the baby away. It is not dramatic to say the child is forcibly separated from his or her mother and placed in the arms of another on purpose. It is difficult to express just how unique the bond is between mother and child. Carrying a baby in the womb is a beautiful, sometimes difficult experience that can’t be described. There is a reason mothers have a special bond with their children in a way fathers can’t and don’t. As a mother myself, the idea of giving away a baby that was nourished by and grown in my own body is a horrifying prospect. The immediate post-birth need for connection, skin-to-skin contact, and voice recognition outside the womb is real, to say nothing of the child’s need for their mother beyond delivery day.
With both IVF and surrogacy, babies are treated as commodities. In the pursuit of family, they are turned into items to be bought and sold. Women who act as surrogates receive compensation for the act of carrying and delivering a human life. And lest we forget, the desire to have a family and go a nontraditional route almost always involves the death of multiple human lives when they are in the embryonic stage of development.
If morality dictates that abortion is wrong because it treats human life as expendable, then the same applies to IVF/surrogacy, even if the end goal is a healthy pregnancy. Human life deserves to be treated with dignity, not as a transaction. Furthermore, these new paths to parenthood can result in the pursuit of a near-flawless human being. And that goal means others are purposely destroyed along the way: “…many couples choose to undergo genetic testing on their embryos, destroying those who are deemed to be defective or undesirable. The overwhelming majority of fertility clinics offer pre-implantation genetic testing, allowing couples to not only screen for serious birth defects, but create a designer child.”
While international adoptions are reportedly decreasing, the surrogacy industry is booming. According to CNBC, “The global commercial surrogacy industry grew to an estimated $14 billion in 2022. By 2032, that figure is forecast to rise to $129 billion.” Women from poorer countries who are in dire financial straits see carrying children for wealthier, Western couples as a way to improve their situations. This is the productization of pregnancy and parenthood.
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Sometimes, couples choose surrogacy after years of waiting through infertility and other heartaches. Others may go that route because of the physical toll pregnancy takes on a woman’s body. But forgotten in so many discussions about reproduction is the new human life itself. Much is lost — or at least cheapened — along the way.
Surrogacy will only grow in popularity as maternal age continues to climb and priorities shift. That makes it all the more important to talk about the downsides to what is so often presented as an unquestioned good. Reducing pregnancy to buyers, sellers, and multiple rounds of human life is not actually progress.
