Don’t say anything at all. That’s how the saying goes. And it’s good advice. Sometimes.
On the Guy Benson surrogacy controversy, Ramesh argues that some social conservatives are “opposing reproductive technologies in a way that is both politically and morally mistaken.”
He makes a fair assessment of where we are: “We are not seeking to affirm a taboo but rather to change minds.” He argues that there’s a “time, place, and manner for argument,” and that “taking to social media to volunteer a criticism at one of the happiest moments in someone’s life” is self-defeating.
He concludes: “The first thing we should do instead is to wish the baby well, and the second is to encourage all those who love and care for that baby.”
Of course, the social conservatives this is directed at do wish the baby well. The reason they offer criticism rather than congratulations to the baby’s legal parents is that they wish to distinguish themselves from those who lend public approval to the practice of acquiring children through gravely harmful means. As my friend, who goes by D.E. on Twitter/X, wrote in response to the response to Benson’s baby announcement:
Children are never responsible for the circumstances of their birth, and always blessings, but to specifically create a child for the intended purpose of removing him from his mother is repulsive, and the people cheering a recent example of that are telling on themselves, poorly.
Wishing well in private or sending gifts for the little one, the way you would in the case of the birth of any other baby, is one thing. Publicly stating things to the effect of “I’m so happy for you!” is another. It’s not the child who benefits from such encouragement. And it’s not the mother, either, who has been written out of the picture. To most onlookers, the act of “encouraging” those who have designed and paid for the child’s estrangement from his mother will be read as approval for their having done so.
Ramesh gives the example of a child being born out of wedlock as an occasion when social conservatives would refrain from publicly opining on the unideal circumstances of that baby’s conception. That’s true, but when someone uses his personal experience to glamorize something socially harmful (as in the case of “beautiful, empowering” divorce stories), that merits a response. In any case, the injustice inflicted on a child conceived with the intended purpose of being removed from his mother in exchange for money is of a different magnitude than that of ordinary human fecklessness.
Ramesh writes: “Even ‘buying a baby’ is not the right way to talk about the issue, given that the baby does not become anyone’s property to exploit or discard — and that kind of charge is guaranteed to be taken badly given the historical smear of gay people as child abusers.”
Really? What is surrogacy if not the prostitution of reproduction? Gametes are bought from online catalogues. Embryos are treated as legal property or “chattel” and can be discarded or donated by those who “own” them. Mothers are reduced to wombs for hire. As my colleague Michael Brendan Dougherty puts it, none of these transactions would be happening unless babies were the expected final products. As for “the historical smear of gay people as child abusers” — it isn’t only gay people who use surrogates.
Even some feminists — who hardly have fuzzy feelings about motherhood — can see this and are much less concerned with being agreeable. (Incidentally, these are some of the same people who flatly ignored the “Oh, can’t you just be kind?” arguments about transgenderism in 2018 and, through their forthrightness, significantly advanced the ball for the legal recognition of sex in the United Kingdom.)
After Anderson Cooper had his child delivered by a surrogate, the writer Joyce Carol Oates wrote:
Congratulations! coverage of this good news focuses so exclusively on Anderson Cooper, you’d think that somehow dear Anderson was both father & mother. (how strange for the mother who’d been pregnant for 9 months, delivered a baby, presented Anderson w/ the baby & is now–gone.)
Note how clearly she distinguishes between the baby’s safe arrival — good news — and the mother’s absence.
Ramesh says, “We would not want to give that child reason to think, when he looks back years later, that we wish he had never been born.” And again, that’s true. If you can’t speak charitably and prudently on something so sensitive — don’t speak at all. But we also wouldn’t want to give such a child reason to think that when he was intentionally separated from his mother — for whom he already instinctively yearns — the whole world cheered.