Surrogacy Is Human Trafficking
Surrogacy is just a fancy word for human trafficking.
Yep, I said what I said.
Renting wombs ought to be illegal. And any contract that orders a woman to get an abortion if the child she is carrying has an “anomaly” is repugnant and hopefully illegal. Buying and selling babies ought to be banned no matter how its done.
These - and other distasteful issues - arise whenever rich people hire less affluent women to carry their children and then are shocked to discover that females develop attachments to the babies in their wombs. By the way, it will always be poor women giving birth for the well-to-do, which introduces another unpleasant element to the arrangements.
As the courts try to untangle the gothic mess transpiring in Texas right now, states should consider outlawing the practice of treating babies as commodities. When the product is defective, the bio parents often want the product destroyed. These are CHILDREN not products.
Cases of biological parents battling birth mothers have been popping up with stomach-churning regularity.
Consider the most recent: The case of McKenna West. An Alaskan nurse and a single mother of two children, she agreed to carry the baby of a couple from Los Angeles, Nausheen Gilkar and Omar Ahmed.
The threesome signed an “ordinary” surrogacy agreement, which called for the termination of any imperfect unborn baby.
When she was 20 weeks pregnant, pre-natal testing showed that the boy West was carrying suffered from a severe - but treatable - heart defect.
The California couple demanded that West abort the baby.
She refused.
The legal battle commenced.
West moved to Texas, where most forms of abortion are illegal and where a Dallas hospital has a 100% success rate in treating this child’s heart defect.
Once there, Attorney General Ken Paxton, who is running for Senate, stepped in on behalf of the mother and got an order for medical care for the newborn as soon as he was born. The baby’s particular defect requires three surgeries, one within the first week of life.
The boy, called Gabriel by West, was due September 2 but arrived on Wednesday of this week. He is due to have heart surgery in the next few days.
West wants to keep the child.
The California couple who wanted him aborted has now decided they want him. Do they want to restore him to health or allow him to die? Unclear.
One thing is certain: They want to keep him away from West.
To that end, the biological parents came to Texas and got a Dallas County judge to issue a temporary restraining order that keeps West away from from the baby and ensures that they have the sole right to make medical decisions for “their” son. The order expires August 25 when the parties are due in court.
Unfreaking-believable.
A judge actually gave a baby to the people who wanted to kill him rather than the woman who traveled thousands of miles to save his little life.
As a result of this heartless decision, a sick newborn is living in an incubator, when what he needs most is to be held by his mother whose heartbeat and voice he heard for nine months.
This boy’s future will ultimately be decided by a Texas judge who first must decide if the surrogacy agreement is valid. West’s legal team believes that the termination clause within the contract, while standard, is “offensive to state and federal law,” according to The Dallas Morning News.
“The law doesn’t permit hit man contracts,” West’s lawyer said. “And this is a hit man contract.”
He’s right, that’s exactly what it is.
On Thursday West’s lawyers said they were ready to fight all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court if necessary to allow West to keep the baby she birthed and loves.
The people who wanted to end the life of the baby seem equally determined to keep him away from his birth mother.
This tug-of-war over a sick baby boy is the sort of monstrous situation that should have been anticipated when people were allowed to treat the birth of a child like a business deal.
This isn’t a business arrangement. It’s a life.
Later this month a Texas judge will play the part of King Solomon when the warring sides are in court.
He should toss the bio-parents out on their derrières.
