"What we are hoping that, by having a surrogate son, Sir Elton will make the whole concept more socially acceptable."That's Barrie Drewitt-Barlow, one of the men who advised Elton John, from the article in today's Dominion Post Meet Dad and Dad: a morality tale for our times. Except the original article from The Telegraph is titled Elton John baby: "Thanks to Zacahary, gay surrogacy will become more acceptable".
I am yet to hear an argument that persuades me that this is a good idea.
ReplyDeleteIf you have lots money you can corrupt the laws of man and bend the laws of nature but you cannot subvert the Laws of God.
ReplyDeleteThe Good Lord arranged things the way he did for purpose - even the Atheist cannot deny there is a reason for two sexes though they may not be able to explain it.
The thing is I can't get over how exploitative of the women involved this is. I recall my wife holding each of our children, immediately after their birth. The joy on her face and the love in her eyes.
It would be selfishly cruel to have taken the babe from her and handed it over to another couple.
God gave us the sacrament of marriage for a reason but we are in rebellion against God - and human unhappiness is the consequence.
Are you not willing to accept that the woman involved was fully consenting to the situation? Some good people on this Earth are blessed in that they can give life's greatest gift to another.
ReplyDeleteTheresa,
ReplyDeleteAnd some women get pregnant on purpose in order to have an abortion. Even if the woman consents, it still doesn't make it right.
I also concede that consent was supplied. Just like in Pakistan:
ReplyDeletePakistan had gained a reputation as an international marketplace for kidneys, with around 4,000 kidney transplants taking place annually and only around 25 percent of the organs coming from related donors.
Around half of those receiving kidneys came in from other countries to receive an organ they had bought, usually from impoverished people in Punjab.
“Around 2,000 transplants took place each year, with about 1,500 of these involving foreign buyers who travelled to Pakistan to buy a kidney,” Maj-Gen (retd) Abdul Qadir Usmani, administrator of the National Human Organ Transplantation Authority (NHOTA), told IRIN.
There are no end of willing donors seeking to get themselves out of poverty by selling a kidney. Does that make it a healthy practice? I suspect most of those people not only earned some money, but gave the wonderful gift of life, so there are certainly some positives to the action.
But for some reason, new laws are trying to suppress the option of people freely giving the gift of life to others.
Much of this changed with the passage of the Transplantation of Human Organs and Tissues law in 2007. The legislation, under which NHOTA was set up, lays down rules that all hospitals and doctors are bound to follow, bars the purchase of kidneys, and restricts donations - essentially to blood relatives.
Consent is a great argument to excuse any behaviour. The value in debating what might seem obviously OK to some people can still help us test our ideas and examine where such actions take us, collectively as a society. There will always be individual cases where the outcomes are good, but sometimes the price we pay might not be fully understood from the outset.
Some of those that willingly sold their kidneys only to discover life-long complications from doing so might now be regretting it.
On the other hand, I can appreciate the value of having a market for kidneys if your life is in jeopardy by not having one, and no relatives are around to donate.
I don't know how much or if any money was involved, but "Consent & Payment" for a human life seems repugnant to me.
ReplyDeleteFrom my experience, pregnacy and childbirth serve to form an incredible bond between mother and child (and also between mother & father, if he is open to it). To reduce this awe-inspiring occurance to a mere finacial transaction makes ever fibre of my being scream out in protest.
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ReplyDeleteIf you have lots money you can corrupt the laws of man and bend the laws of nature but you cannot subvert the Laws of God.
ReplyDeleteO/t a bit - Andrei, Joni Mitchell has lyrics echoing that sentiment in a song called The Wolf That Lives In Lindsey -
If you're smart or rich or lucky
Maybe you'll beat the laws of man
But the inner laws of spirit
And the outer laws of nature
No man can
No--no man can
I like the way the first verse starts, too -
Of the darkness in men's minds
What can you say
That wasn't marked by history
Or the T.V. news today