Once you’ve put on a pair of children’s rights glasses, you can’t help but see rampant child-violations even in what is intended to be feel-good stories.
Lance Bass, a gay-identifying former popstar, documented his “struggle” with IVF and surrogacy for years. This from 2020:
“Lance Bass reveals latest setback in his journey to become a dad: The former *NSYNC singer and his husband, Michael Turchin, experienced a devastating miscarriage earlier this year.
‘Unfortunately, we just lost our surrogate that we’ve had for over two years,’ Bass shared. ‘And so now, now begins the process of finding a replacement surrogate, which is hard… because a lot of surrogates really don’t want to get pregnant during a time like this.’
Bass noted that he (and?) Turchin will explore adoption if their 10th embryo transfer doesn’t work.
‘There are plenty of kids who need adopting,” he said. “So, I’m not opposed to going right ahead and adopting if this fails next time.’” (the quotation marks are inconsistent in these quotes)
But with a few more eggs and yet another woman’s womb, the two men finally achieved two live births in 2021.
”The baby dragons have arrived!! ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️’ Bass wrote in the caption. ‘I can not express how much love I feel right now. Thank you for all the kind wishes. It meant a lot. Now, how do you change a diaper??! Ahhhhhhhh!'”
Bass’s most recent appearance unwittingly revealed a few critical differences between the process of designing motherless babies and children who are raised by their own mom and dad.
“’The first year, they wouldn’t give me any love. They never hugged, they never wanted to snuggle, and I was so upset about it. Because they would do that with my mom. My mom would come over and boom, they’d snuggle with her…’
‘Us trying to get pregnant was a difficult time,’ says Bass. ‘It took us three years to finally get these kids.’
Over the course of two full rounds of IVF — one of which led to a pregnancy loss six weeks in — and working with 10 egg donors, Bass says it was ‘hard not to get discouraged.’ ‘There were definitely times where we went to so many different donors, and you start questioning the universe, like, Am I being told that I should not have kids?'”
Bass is learning first-hand what social science and natural law makes clear. “Biological differences between men and women help shape their parenting styles and these parenting styles produce unique effects which benefit children in numerous ways. Although both father and mother share the same goal, successfully raising their children, they achieve that goal differently.”
The Effect of Gender-Based Parental Influences on Raising Children by psychiatrist and distinguished fellow of the American Psychiatric Association Scott Haltzman explains,
Parenting styles correlate to biological differences between men and women. Women, compared to men, have higher levels of oxytocin—the hormone responsible for emotional bonding—and oxytocin receptors. Oxytocin serves to calm anxiety, reduce motor activity, and foster an increase in touch. In contrast, testosterone—present in men at levels tenfold higher than women—is correlated to an increase in motor activity in infant boys and may be responsible for higher levels of physical activities in men compared to women.
Them Before Us President Katy Faust took to twitter to present the child’s perspective on Bass’s comment, “They wouldn’t give me any love. They never hugged, they never wanted to snuggle, and I was so upset about it. Because they would do that with my mom. My mom would come over and boom, they’d snuggle with her.”
Faust replied, “It’s as if babies need/crave maternal love.”
Bass proclaimed he was “thrilled to stay in touch, not only with the surrogate, but their egg donor…'[The donor] was just so cool, my son looks exactly like her. It’s crazy.'”
Faust replied, “Crazy that the baby ‘looks exactly like’ his bio mother? That’s how genetics works, They are as much her child as yours.”
To his recognition that, “Us trying to get pregnant was a difficult time, it took us three years to finally get these kids.”
Faust replied, “Yes, you finally ‘got’ kids. And it *should* be difficult to create motherless babies, because it hinders their identify formation, attachment, and development.”
Several conservative outlets took note of Bass’s statements as well. Live Action highlighted the cost of these technologies on women and children, and Them Before Us was featured prominently in Evie Magazine’s coverage of his remarks.
While stories like these generate a great deal of attention, surrogacy isn’t just unethical when gay singles or couples use it. Surrogacy is wrong even when straight couples use it. That’s because surrogacy always violates the rights of children. And no adult- single, married, gay, straight, fertile, or infertile- should force a child to sacrifice their rights so adults can live as they please. We have to put Them, children, before Us, adults.