“One of the most dangerous and extreme surrogacy bills I’ve ever seen about to be voted on in Massachusetts,” Katy Faust stated on June 11 on X.

Faust is a children’s rights advocate, author and founder of Them Before Us, a nonprofit organization fighting for “children’s rights over adult’s desires.”

The “Parentage Equality” bill is trying to “redefine parenthood,” The Federalist explains. This new bill strips all language of gender-specific parenthood from parentage law, withholding verbiage of mothers and fathers, “replacing these vital familial roles with gender-erased language.”

This proposed bill (H. 4672), according to the City of Boston, would provide “equal protection for LGBTQ+ families, as well as for families who conceive through assisted reproduction, including in vitro fertilization (IVF) and surrogacy.”

The Massachusetts House is expected to vote on the bill on June 12. The Massachusetts Family Council, a Focus on the Family-allied state family policy council, opposes the legislation.

The most concerning thing is that under the proposal, Massachusetts would permit “commercial surrogacy both in cases wherein the woman carrying the child is genetically unrelated to the child and in cases where she is exchanging her biological child for money,” The Federalist stated.

This is extraordinarily problematic because “surrogacy is an inherently exploitative practice.”

Faust writes in her book, Them Before Us, “thanks to surrogacy, facilitating the tragedy of mother loss has become a billion-dollar industry.”

Surrogacy has two forms: traditional (where the mother is impregnated with her own genetic child) and gestational (where the mother is impregnated with donor eggs), both of which have harmful effects for the mother and baby. The reality is the billion-dollar industry has been formed by exploiting women and treating babies as something to buy for personal preference.

Not only are these babies stripped from families, but the Institute for Family Studies (IFS) cites a study concluding that “surrogacy pregnancy should be considered as a high-risk emotional experience because many surrogate mothers many face negative experiences.”

The emotional risk is high for both parties involved, but the physical risks of carrying multiple pregnancies, C-sections and longer hospital stays are almost never discussed.

YouTuber Shane Dawson and his “husband” Ryland Adams talk in a video online about the number of male and female embryos they created through in vitro fertilization (IVF). Recognizing them as babies, they talk about which ones they want to keep, while seeming to not care about the babies they’ll choose to discard.

They even admit online, “it’s so weird too because our babies have barcodes,” adding, “it was very strange to click purchase on our child’s mother,” continuing to crack jokes, “I don’t like playing God.”

That’s because no one was created to.

As we’ve previously written, “There are a myriad of ethical problems going on in this video. Because male homosexual couples are in an inherently sterile relationship, they must rely on two modern procedures to produce children: fertilization of an egg outside the womb (IVF) and the transfer of embryos into a surrogate womb. When IVF is used by homosexual couples to create children, the rights of these children to have a mother and a father are violated.”

It’s harmful to sacrifice the well-being of children and their right to a nurturing mother-child relationship in order to “buy eggs and rent wombs,” as Allie Beth Stuckey tweeted.

Focus on the Family has issued a stance on the morality of surrogacy stating, “God created marriage, sex, conception and childbirth to function as interwoven events. … By artificially separating those acts, modern science oversteps its boundaries – and the sanctity of marriage is at risk.”

The Daily Citizen has also published stories related to LGBT families, stating, “It is never [emphasis is original] morally right to forcibly separate a newborn child from their mother and father, simply to fulfill the desire of grown adults.”

If you live in Massachusetts, consider getting involved with the Massachusetts Family Institute; you can also sign their petition opposing the Parentage Equality Bills.

 

Image from Shutterstock.