Welcome to Breakpoint, a daily look at an ever-changing culture through the lens of unchanging truth for the Colson Center. I'm John Stone Street. Last week, a disturbing story broke about the fate of a child that was acquired through surrogacy. Logan Riley and Brandon Mitchell, so-called married men from Pennsylvania, had chronicled their quest for a baby on social media. And that's how the world learned that Mitchell was in fact a registered child sex offender due to highly indecent behavior from a decade ago.
Though forbidden from unsupervised contact with a minor, he was still somehow able with his partner to buy a baby. As Katie Faust of Them Before Us often reminds us, nothing that these men did to acquire this baby was illegal. In fact, it's an extra-legal situation. Unlike the host of regulations and investigations that govern adoption, no such rules apply when it comes to surrogacy. As Faust posted about this incident, and I quote, this horrifying case of a pedophile acquiring a surrogate boy is opening a lot of eyes.
This isn't adoption, and that's by design. No part of this process considers the best interests of the child. It's a market-based delivery system for any and every adult to acquire children. ⁇ And then she later added, This kind of failing isn't a bug of the system, it's a feature. In fact, there are two interrelated systems at work here that produce this horrific result.
There's the legal system, which, as Faust noted in her post, is basically allergic to any and all regulation or legal barrier to artificial reproductive technologies, especially. For those that provide same-sex couples with children. But there's also the artificial reproductive technologies themselves, which are pushing further and further into uncharted territory. For example, Ellis Dugdale recently wrote about eight babies made in a lab.
Now, tragically, that kind of thing's not uncommon these days. Why these particular babies made headlines is that each one carries DNA from three parents. One man and two women.
Now, as it turns out, the genetic contributions from each adult are not even close to being equal. As Dougdale put it, and I quote, the aim of this procedure has not been to create hybrid creatures, but to prevent horrific disease linked to mitochondria, the microscopic power generators in the mother's egg, end quote. And that sounds noble until we remember that the aim of IVF and surrogacy was to help infertile couples have children. But now these ethically fraught practices are being used to help perfectly healthy adults who are not infertile. but are actually naturally sterile to acquire children.
And so is there any doubt that this procedure, known as mitochondrial donation, won't be used to give polyamorous couples the kind of kids that they want too? In another recent piece in the Free Press, Madeleine Kearns described her journey through what she called her own unexplained infertility. Multiple doctors had recommended to her IVF as being the best and even only option. But Kearns instead chose something known as natural procreative technology. An emerging science that's aimed at treating underlying conditions that affect fertility.
As Kearns put it, and I quote, revolutionary though it has been, IVF does not restore a would-be mother's body to optimal health. In fact, IVF is often a profoundly uncomfortable experience for women, not to mention an expensive one. It's no wonder that many women with unexplained infertility are left feeling that mainstream medicine has failed them. Subjecting them to stressful, painful interventions while leaving them in the dark about the mysteries of their own bodies. In other words, what is driving most of our artificial reproductive technologies is not a desire to restore health.
Rather, these technologies intend to provide adults with what they want. It may sound like a small difference, but it's incredibly important. As medical ethicist Ben Mitchell wrote, when quote, medicine becomes just another consumer good, customers tell the providers what they want, and the providers either respond accordingly or are left behind in the market, end quote. The reproductive marketplace is built on twin illusions of both consumerism and control. In this world, the Almighty I should have whatever he or she wants.
Those who want sex without children should not be quote unquote punished with a child, and those who want a child without the trouble of giving birth should be able to rent an incubator or a surrogate. Those who've chosen an inherently sterile union should still be able to insist not only that they can have kids, but that others should pay for it. And we can be absolutely sure that any future technologies will be utilized accordingly. A worldview that insists on absolute autonomy, that the customer is always right, We'll corrupt medicine. Christians have to offer a better way.
In fact, the opportunities are ripe right now. For the Bride of Christ to promote healing, to become agents of restoration in the world of medicine, and to advance human dignity, not just by opposing abortion, but also by ensuring that children aren't reduced to products that are bought and sold. For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street with Breakpoint. Today's Breakpoint was co-authored by Dr. Timothy Padgett.
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