Dear New York Senator/Assemblyman,
Them Before Us exists to defend a child’s fundamental right to their mother and father. This right grants children not only the two people who are statistically the most likely to be connected to, protective of, and invested in them but also gives them the biological identity that all humans crave. This natural child right should be vehemently protected by all adults, especially those in power.
We write to convey our strong opposition to New York Senate Bill S.17A and urge you to vote against it, upholding New York’s commitment to stand for the rights of the defenseless. While longing be a parent is a natural and noble desire, it should not be achieved at the expense of the rights and wellbeing of children. Many donor- and surrogate conceived people oppose creating children with the express intent of denying them a relationship with one or both biological parents. They highlight the genealogical bewilderment, psychological struggles, and familial instability that they have faced, regardless of their household structure.
By disregarding the rights of children to be known and loved by both biological parents, SB S.17A codifies the commodification of children. In addition, legalizing commercial surrogacy ignores decades of adoption, foster care, and child protection statutes, which seeks to prevent child trafficking by prohibiting payments directly to birth mothers. Not only is state support of paid surrogacy an abuse of governmental power but it’s also psychologically damaging to the children born of these arrangements. Jessica Kern, a child of surrogacy, states:
I am told, look how much your parents wanted you, they planned and saved to have you….When you know that a huge part of the reason that you came into the world is due solely to a paycheck, and that after being paid you are disposable, given away and never thought of again, it impacts how you view yourself.”
SB S.17A claims to “take into consideration the best interests of the child”, yet the means to that end involves dismantles their fundamental rights. SB S.17A aligns the power of the state behind the desires of intended parents at the expense of a child’s identity and natural rights. It’s never in the child’s “best interest” to be treated as a commodity to be cut and pasted, purchased and sold by any and every adult, regardless of how much those adults want a baby.
We implore you to stand for those who are unable to stand for themselves, and vote against S.17A because this bill is bad for children. As one donor conceived woman puts it, “This is not a new way of creating families, it’s a new way of ripping them apart.”
Though I understand your concerns, I would like to know if you personally have struggled with infertility. Unless you have gone through infertility struggles yourself, I feel as if you have no right to discuss such matters. Infertility is a disease that I would not wish upon my worst enemy. The women who choose to either donate their eggs and or carry someone else’s child are making dreams come true. Would you suggest I remain childless because of my own medical shortcomings? Believe me, if I had the choice I would carry my child. But for me, this is my only option. So For you to deny myself and many others the joy of caring for and raising a child, I hope for your own sake, that you never have to face the heart wrenching pains associated with infertility struggle.
There is zero chance this person ever struggled with having kids.
Agreed. Every person listed on the staff for this website who has children apparently has zero empathy for people who have not been as fortunate as they are. What’s more, this article fails to acknowledge that some couples are able to conceive using their own eggs/sperm, but carrying the pregnancy is not possible. Thus, the use of a surrogate. In cases like that,the child is biologically related to both parents. Finally, they are assuming that biological parents are always the best caregivers for children. That is ideal, certainly, but not always the case.
Actually, Yes. Infertility is not a death sentence. If you were really interested in kids, you would be willing to foster. But no, you’d rather beat your drum for selfish reasons–to be able to say “Mine and no one else’s,” which is never true in an adoptee’s mind.
Have you Fostered Mary?
I am curious to know who owns this site. A friend introduced me to this site just recently and I find the selfishness and judgment passed in this website quite appalling.
Obviously these people live in their perfect little lives with their perfect little kids passing judgement on how somehow infertility or the inability to carry one’s own child is a punishment.
Its people like these that spread the outdated poisonous world-view that somehow biology reigns supreme over all else. I believe the last State that promoted biology over all else was called Nazi Germany.
I believe that its love that makes a parent not biology. We now have technology that enables childless sterile couples to give the gift of life to a child that would otherwise not have been born. I feel passionately about this topic and as my friend once reassured me Sperms and Eggs don’t make a parent, love does. It the time you spend reassuring your kids, those sleepless nights, those holidays taken etc that makes a parent, not the sperm or an egg.
So please can I urge the perfect people that own this site to be less judgmental but have more love.
My wife and I have struggled to have children for a long time so I have thought about this issue a great deal. I’m very passionate about children and their rights. I know as bad as I want my own children, the ends never justify the means. And the ends for children should not be based on a self centered adult desire. Infertility is heart breaking, but there are better ways. Adopt a child and give them the mother and father they so desperately need!
Brett,
As someone who has been there who ended up childless at the end of the day my advice to you would be to do what’s best and what you and your wife are comfortable with. The reality is doing what you believe is the right thing won’t do any good in the long term for you and your wife. You’ll be outcasted by society and forgotten about from those that have children.
There is nothing on this site that is selfish. The selfishness comes from people who want what then want without regard to the children. Infertility does not justify selfishness, and, in the case of IVP, the killing of up to 20 babies in order to have one live birth.
The old and tired canard of “well, if you haven’t experienced it, you have no right to talk about it” is lame on its face. If this were true, we could not speak about slavery unless we were slaves, we cannot speak of child molesting or child trafficking unless we have experienced it, and so on.
These issues go beyond the individual and the individual bias. Universal principles are at play here and we have a right, in the name of truth, and in this case, in the name of children, to speak out. Children have a right to a mother and father, they have a right to be conceived by their own mother and father.
We have no right to kill babies in order to give birth to one. IVP is thus a murderous procedure.
From the Catholic Catechism:
2375 Research aimed at reducing human sterility is to be encouraged, on condition that it is placed “at the service of the human person, of his inalienable rights, and his true and integral good according to the design and will of God.”
2376 Techniques that entail the dissociation of husband and wife, by the intrusion of a person other than the couple (donation of sperm or ovum, surrogate uterus), are gravely immoral. These techniques (heterologous artificial insemination and fertilization) infringe the child’s right to be born of a father and mother known to him and bound to each other by marriage. They betray the spouses’ “right to become a father and a mother only through each other.”
2377 Techniques involving only the married couple (homologous artificial insemination and fertilization) are perhaps less reprehensible, yet remain morally unacceptable. They dissociate the sexual act from the procreative act. The act which brings the child into existence is no longer an act by which two persons give themselves to one another, but one that “entrusts the life and identity of the embryo into the power of doctors and biologists and establishes the domination of technology over the origin and destiny of the human person. Such a relationship of domination is in itself contrary to the dignity and equality that must be common to parents and children.” “Under the moral aspect procreation is deprived of its proper perfection when it is not willed as the fruit of the conjugal act, that is to say, of the specific act of the spouses’ union . . . . Only respect for the link between the meanings of the conjugal act and respect for the unity of the human being make possible procreation in conformity with the dignity of the person.”
2378 A child is not something owed to one, but is a gift. The “supreme gift of marriage” is a human person. A child may not be considered a piece of property, an idea to which an alleged “right to a child” would lead. In this area, only the child possesses genuine rights: the right “to be the fruit of the specific act of the conjugal love of his parents,” and “the right to be respected as a person from the moment of his conception.”
2379 The Gospel shows that physical sterility is not an absolute evil. Spouses who still suffer from infertility after exhausting legitimate medical procedures should unite themselves with the Lord’s Cross, the source of all spiritual fecundity. They can give expression to their generosity by adopting abandoned children or performing demanding services for others.