In France, citizens seem to be able to say yes to same-sex marriage but no to surrogacy:
The debate over whether society and science are overreaching when it comes to parenthood has sent thousands into the streets, turned the bridges over the Seine into billboards and prompted charges that women’s bodies will soon be for rent in a society that still has surprisingly deep conservative roots.
President Francois Hollande’s promise to legalise gay marriage was seen as relatively uncontroversial when it first came up as a campaign pledge. Then, as the debate began this week, his justice minister quietly issued an order to grant French birth certificates for children born to surrogates abroad.
The news reopened a raw and unwelcome national debate on fertility treatments, surrogacy and adoption. Assisted reproduction is off-limits to all but heterosexual couples showing at least two years of companionship. Egg donation has been regulated nearly into non-existence, and surrogacy of any kind is punishable by a prison term.
And now, a resident of Martinique speaks to his representatives in France, expressing his concern:
And what of the child? Since two men and two women cannot procreate, what are we to do? We need a man and a woman to produce a child. There is no avoiding what happens next. We will have to legalize medically assisted procreation in the name of recognizing the legality of the child of same-sex couples. But it is not laws that deprive homosexuals of children, no, it is nature. So these couples, like sterile couples, will now be guaranteed the right to have insemination or surrogacy. Therefore where is the new freedom here? How do you expect a man whose ancestors have been sold not to be haunted by this?
For history, see the French National Assembly, “Parlimentary Report on the Family and the Rights of Children,” (January 26, 2006) which I wrote about here.
Categories: Marriage, Reproductive Technologies, The Future of Parenthood
The government pulled back from their plan to include assisted reproduction in the marriage bill.
Today, deputies voted 249-97 to back the clause eliminating opposite gender as a condition of the right to marriage. They will now begin considering thousands of amendments offered by conservatives to slow down the passage of the bill. The debate is expected to last two weeks and marriage equality is expected pass easily.
Opinion polls have shown the number of people supporting marriage equality France has risen despite (or perhaps because of) the massive protests sponsored by the Catholic Church.
The proportion of those supporting the change in the law rose to 63 percent in late January from 60 percent in early January and December.
[In France, citizens seem to be able to say yes to same-sex marriage but no to surrogacy:]
Yeah, because France. Different governmental system. Also banned in France, face covering, conspicuous religious symbols in schools, certain plays and movies and hate speech. Ban’s under consideration, homework, yarmulkes and circumcision.
Rob writes:
“The government pulled back from their plan to include assisted reproduction in the marriage bill.”
Do you know if that means they will outlaw assisted reproduction using “donor” gametes and wombs for all married people (hetro and homo-sexuals) AND unmarried single people? Or just “surrogacy”?
I wonder if his words have any more weight because he is a black man:
And because he is “a man of the Left” and cites humanism as his motivation (not religion or hate):
I wonder.
Inasmuch as the National Organization for Marriage has become involved in the French marriage debate, this man is probably simply a pawn. We know from NOM’s internal memo that was leaked last year that one of their strategies was to create a divide between blacks and gays, two key Democratic Party constituencies in order to defeat President Obama. That did not work out very well in the U.S. I doubt it will work out very well in France either.
As to his not evoking religious reasons, the Roman Catholic Church is very unpopular, so they have been trying to find non-religious reasons to oppose same-sex marriage. So it could well be that this man is a shill for religious organizations even if he proclaims his humanism.
And since the website is almost certainly a creation of NOM or the Witherspoon Institute or another Roman Catholic front organization, and since the essay is translated by Lopez, it really is just more of the same.
Oh common! Seriously? You seriously think that?! That’s so unbelievably insulting. No more comment.
“And what of the child? Since two men and two women cannot procreate, what are we to do?”
Mind your own business might be a good place to start.
“But it is not laws that deprive homosexuals of children, no, it is nature.”
Well, no, homosexuals are as fertile as heterosexuals. Same-sex couples cannot reproduce conventionally, but that’s true regardless of their sexual orientation. And if a gay man and a gay woman want to create a baby together, Mother Nature is totally ok with that?
Actually, laws don’t deprive homosexual of nature anyway. Many gay couples are raising children from a previous relationship, or an encounter with a person of the other sex. Sexual orientation does not impact fertility. As I prowl the internet on this topic, it surprises me how many people think gay people can’t reproduce. Very strange.
I have no idea why this man’s slave ancestors influence his thinking. Is he actually implying that the children of same-sex couples are slaves? Does the ridiculous argumentation against same-sex marriage and same-sex parenting have no bounds? I’m surprised this kind of comment is being posted as an article, as it violates the civility policy of the website.
“as it violates the civility policy of the website.“???????????????????????????
Kevin
The slave analogy is not even an analogy its just a fact. In the old days people purchased human beings and made them serve them in whatever capacity they desired, they were assigned the last names of those who purchased them. People bred with their slaves and they bred their slaves with one another and the offspring of the slaves became the property of of the person that owned the parents freedom and those children also were given the name of the person who owned the rights to them. People willed slaves and gave them as gifts. People sold themselves into slavery too. It is not what they had the slaves do that defines slavery its the ownership of the person and the replacement of their identity with the identity of the owner rather than being free and living for themselves and the family they originated from.
Today people buy or are given the right to reproduce other human beings and then they keep their offspring and name them after themselves and call themselves their parents because they want the people born as their property to serve them as their children.
That is the most horrible, self-centered comment I’ve ever read on this website, and I’ve read a bunch of them.
@Rob – as Mont D Law says, politics in France is different from here. It’s completely believable to me that someone on the left might be against surrogacy for reasons unrelated to the Church.
I find it interesting that France has completely banned surrogacy and limited donor conception so thoroughly. I think the key here is that this was done for heterosexual couples before there was any talk of gay marriage. Hopefully the rules won’t change and will be applied the same to everyone.
@Elizabeth Marquardt – I think one reason for the difference between us and France on this issue is that business in general is less regulated here. We let the issues of surrogacy be run by the marketplace. France is less capitalistic and they didn’t.
The desperation of the opponents of same-sex marriage is marked by the ever-more-extreme and absurd arguments they use. This argument is almost certainly being orchestrated from the United States, which is another reason why it will have no traction in France.
what do you find absurd about it?
happens all the time in the US
I think this French self-described man of the Left, if you read his speech is saying yes to homosexuality, not to same-sex marriage and surrogacy.
“The desperation of the opponents of same-sex marriage is marked by the ever-more-extreme and absurd arguments they use. This argument is almost certainly being orchestrated from the United States, which is another reason why it will have no traction in France.”
And the entertainment value of both their desperation and their rhetoric is enormous. What I want to know is, why on earth would anyone care so much to go to these lengths? At some point, one gets to wonder if a line hasn’t been crossed, from merely holding a belief, to being obsessed.
Karen and Marilynn, the slave analogy is quite offensive, as couples who want to be parents, whether straight or gay, are not purchasing human beings against their will, for the purposes of taking their uncompensated labor, any more than a couple who adopts a child from an orphanage is engaging in the slave trade.
It is a smear against gay people to imply that they are modern day slaveholders, and mimics the other disgusting observations anti-gay people make about same-sex parents, such as they’re using kids as pets or accessories, or that a gay person’s desire to be a parent is selfish, but a straight person’s desire to parent is honorable and virtuous. It’s unfortunate that this website lets such assertions be posted, as either an article or a comment.
@maggie gallagher – If you follow the link, the Representative from Martinique is against gay marriage as well as surrogacy.
@Rob and Kevin – I think it’s insulting to suggest that if a Representative from Martinique gives a speech opposing gay marriage, it must have been orchestrated from the U.S. People in other countries have the ability to think on their own. Suggesting that they are just puppets is ultimately colonialist and racist.
What’s coming from the US is the website translating the debate. No doubt that particular website is giving a one-sided view of things, but that is not the same thing as mysteriously orchestrating the debate.
Here’s my take on the situation in France, although I’m not an expert and doing my best to read French.
Most French support same sex marriage, but the are divided as to whether or not same sex couples should be able to raise children.
The law allows both marriage and adoption, so both issues are coming up.
In addition, the minister of the family really flubbed things for supporters of same sex marriage but trying to allow children born to surrogates in other countries to have French citizenship.
So opponents of same sex marriage are focusing on issues of adoption and assisted-reproduction. This hurts the chances of the law.
However, after debating the exact law for a while, the legislature is trying to put off discussing issues of assisted reproduction and focus on this law.
From LeMonde – “La PMA, que les députés socialistes souhaitaient voir ouverte aux couples de femmes à l’occasion de la loi sur le mariage, a été officiellement renvoyée à un projet ultérieur sur la famille, prévu pour fin mars.”
So here’s what I think is happening – “artificial insemination which the socialist representatives hoped to open to lesbian couples at the time of the law on marriage has been officially postponed to a future project(? nor sure of word here?) on the family, planned for the end of March.”
Then they talk about how surrogacy was never intended to be part of the debate, but the education ministry’s attempt to allow citizenship for children conceived by surrogacy abroad brought the issue into play and the opposition used it.
Kevin just to make this explicitly clear I am a big supporter of gay rights and the right to have marriages between same sex couples be legally recognized because I am in favor of people receiving equal treatment under the law. I think discrimination and differential treatment are wrong regardless of who is doing it, who its being done to or why.
It’s not an analogy, Kevin. It is purchasing people to own them. Yes it is offensive, but its not the people that want to stop it that are offensive, it is the practice, and the expectation that they should be spared any offense. Don’t you think Frederick Douglas was offensive to slave holders?
“Karen and Marilynn, the slave analogy is quite offensive, as couples who want to be parents, whether straight or gay, are not purchasing human beings against their will, for the purposes of taking their uncompensated labor, any more than a couple who adopts a child from an orphanage is engaging in the slave trade.”
K let’s go over this one step at a time.
Things grow wild to serve themselves – animals and plants and people all reproduce to serve their own purposes. Humans seek to control and regulate the reproduction of wild life in order to better serve the needs of humans. Whether its breeding dogs to serve as pets for our entertainment or chickens to serve as food for our bellies, we control their reproduction and their young are then born to serve a particular purpose. These animals given as examples are not born free as the responsibility of the parents who created them they are born not free and are treated as the responsibility of the humans who controlled their parents reproduction. The humans ultimately separate the young from the parents and then lead them to slaughter or keep them as pets or put them in zoos or circuses or whatever. Some will have a comfortable existence as the family pet others will spend their time on earth in dark warehouses being fattened for market. Regardless they are not free and are branded as property of the human who controls their existence.
Sewing the seeds of other living things, growing the offspring from those seeds lovingly, tending to them, providing food, and water and light and an optimal environment to grow and flourish in order to reap the harvest for yourself makes you a farmer not a parent.
Hundreds of thousands of black people bear the surnames of the people who purchased their ancestors freedom in total. Hundreds of thousands of people of every race nationality and religion bear the surnames of the people who purchased the reproductive freedom of at least one of their parents. They now have no choice but to serve as the child of the person who purchased their parent’s reproductive freedom. They will either live life as if they had only one parent or live life as if they were the child of a couple who did not reproduce to create them.
There is a difference between finding people to raise abandoned children and finding abandoned children for people to raise. Finding people to raise abandoned children does not treat the abandoned child as an object or a commodity as a sought after prize. We have people now willing to manufacture abandoned children in order to serve the needs of people who want to become adoptive or social parents. That is of course slavery.
It costs a bundle to raise an abandoned minor to adulthood and the government has an interest in finding people to raise abandoned minors or minors whose parents have been found unfit to care for them. Making yourself available to adopt children in need through the foster care system does not cost the adopting party and it should not cost anything, why should the adopting party have to pay anything when they are willing to take on the expense of raising a minor to adulthood. If it costs the adopting party anything it means they are paying someone to get them a child to raise and that is buying a child. You don’t have to be a parent in order to be in a position to sell a child you just have to be in a position of control over the child or in a position to negotiate an exchange. So maybe the parents are not being paid to relinquish the child but the attorney or orphanage or country or state is making money and paying salaries with the money it takes from people who are shopping for a child to raise. If a person gained their parental authority over someone else’s offspring by seeking it out and motivating others to give them the child with money or goods or services then its not ethical and the child was the object of a trade agreement. If you make yourself available to take care of a kid in need and the adoption fees are taken care of by the state because the child was a ward of the state then you did not buy the child. If you don’t rename the child or keep them sequestered from their genetic family then your not objectifying the child and they live life as who they are the child of the people not taking care of them the adopted child of the people who are taking care of them.
Diane wrote: “@Rob and Kevin – I think it’s insulting to suggest that if a Representative from Martinique gives a speech opposing gay marriage, it must have been orchestrated from the U.S. People in other countries have the ability to think on their own. Suggesting that they are just puppets is ultimately colonialist and racist.”
No, what is insulting to the people of France is the interference of the National Organization for Marriage in French affairs. It is NOM who has articulated a strategy to pit blacks and gays against each other. It is NOM who chose to insert itself in French affairs. That is colonialist and racist.
I think the strategy has backfired. Since their intervention in French affairs the polls have shown an increase in support for same-sex marriage, which now looks to pass quite easily.
People on this site used to compare same-sex parents to prostitutes. They they were selfish people who regarded their children as ornaments. Then they were accused of dehumanizing their children. Now they are compared to slave-owners. Yes, increasing desperation, and also increasingly offensive. To say nothing of uncivil.
“There is a difference between finding people to raise abandoned children and finding abandoned children for people to raise.”
That should read:
“There is a difference between finding people to raise abandoned children and MAKING abandoned children for people to raise.”
“…is the interference of the National Organization for Marriage in French affairs“??????????????????
A genetic parent has to fail to raise their own offspring in order for other people to become the social, legal or adoptive parents of their offspring. Being wanted by the social, legal and adoptive parent only draws attention to the fact that they were not wanted by their genetic parent. A child has no right to expect anyone other than the people responsible for creating them to be responsible for raising them, so they can be grateful and have a good relationship with the people raising them so long as they had nothing to do with the reason their genetic parent is not raising them.
Here is a good link http://www.foxbusiness.com/personal-finance/2013/01/29/bundle-joy-costs-adoption-vs-surrogacy/
Tell me Kevin if your mother and father were from a country with no welfare and had to put you in an orphanage to ensure that you would have enough to eat and would receive adequate medical care – knowing that poverty and lack of money was the reason you were separated from your genetic family…would that not stand in stark contrast to knowing that money and the abundance of it were the reason you were given to strangers who wanted to raise you? You’d feel a heck of a lot different if you were being raised by someone who found you on their doorstep with a note pinned to to your bassinet saying “you look like a nice person and my baby needs a good home”
(It is purchasing people to own them.)
So biological parents are breeding people to own them?
Rob writes:
“People on this site used to compare same-sex parents to prostitutes”
No. The comparison was and has always been in relation to the sexual capacity between two people of the opposite sex and those who purchase (or take) that sexual capacity for their parenting desires intentionally separating the child conceived from the transaction from one or more of their biological/genetic parents and extended biological family.
Manny says: “It is purchasing people to own them.”
Well, no, parents, biological, adoptive or step, do not “own” their children, they are their guardians. Big difference. I own my dog; I don’t own my children, even though they are biologically mine. My remark about how offensive it is was made in the context of this website’s stated premise that irrelevant unkind and offensive observations violate its civility policy. Comparing same-sex parenting to owning slaves is remarkably unkind and offensive, in the same way that declaring Jews as unfit parents would be, for condemning their kids to an eternity in hell for not teaching them that Jesus Christ is our savior. I’m guessing the latter premise might get deleted by the moderator but evidently comparing same-sex parenting to owning slaves is ok. Heck, let’s just get it out of the way and compare gay couples to the Nazis.
Marilynn, I think you undermine whatever legitimate points you might have to make regarding non-conventional reproduction by comparing it to slavery. If children can be produced for selfish adult reasons, what says that biological parents can’t have the same selfish reasons? What do you make of women of advancing years, risking deformity in their babies, but who insist that they want to be a mom, and they’re willing to take the risk? Similarly, what about older men, whom we know possess deteriorating sperm, facing the same congenital concerns? What about elderly men even being parents? Should inter-racial couples be allowed to reproduce, given they’ll be creating biracial children facing the hostility of a raise-conscious society? What are the pros and cons of creating an only child? What are the pros and cons of having a zillion kids because you oppose birth control?
If being raised by one’s biological parents is the end-all, be-all, why are single people allowed to raise children, and why are step-parents allowed to raise children?
In this world of Straight Privilege that we live in, I love that straight people are given unfettered latitude to do as they please, reproduction- and parenting-wise, but gay people are placed under a microscope. I think it’s best for a child to be raised by two married (that is, legally obligated to each other) parents who want to raise a child, regardless of their sexual orientation, than to be raised by one or both biological parents who are indifferent to that child, or worse, see it as a burden. As Maggie Gallagher and the anti-same sex marriage vanguard so eloquently argue, straight people often have no particular connection to their biological children, and need the “incentive” of marriage to coerce them into taking care of their children. I think she, in particular, really means straight men but is too polite to say so, or it doesn’t serve her needs to be that specific. Regardless, I don’t see a happy outcome when people are forced to take care of children they don’t want, but I don’t necessarily see a better way of handling unwanted children.
I’m hard-pressed to comprehend the superiority of being raised by biologically related adults who are indifferent to you or see you as a burden, another mouth to feed as it were, compared to adults who actually want to raise you and care for you.
I would also add, Marilynn, that the anti-gays have seized your 3PR issues in a misguided but desperate attempt to shore up their own jihad against gay people, specifically, their right to a government-recognized relationship institution. They are muddying the water of whatever is legitimate about your reproduction/parenting viewpoint. Their message is that biology is a weak force for sound parenting; yours appears to be that biology is everything. If you want your message to get through, you now have the burden of clarifying your viewpoint, and your reason for it, in the face of the anti-gays’ opposition.
“No, what is insulting to the people of France is the interference of the National Organization for Marriage in French affairs. It is NOM who has articulated a strategy to pit blacks and gays against each other. It is NOM who chose to insert itself in French affairs. That is colonialist and racist.”
Rob, do you have any evidence that NOM has been influencing the situation in France?
There are conservatives in France. You don’t need to assume that outsiders have made them oppose same sex marriage or adoption, etc.
Do you have any evidence at all that NOM had anything to do with some socialist Representative from Martinique?
I think it’s much more likely that the Representative is against same sex marriage because most people in Martinique are. I think he’s speaking for himself without anyone pitting him against anybody.
What seems most interesting and important to me in the French situation is this, though:
Most French are for same sex marriage, but against surrogacy and assisted reproduction.
Unlike in America, they were already against surrogacy and assisted reproduction for heterosexual couples before the issue of same sex marriage came up.
As I said before, I think this is because they didn’t let the market drive the issue but stepped in an regulated it right away based on ethical principles.
One thing we could learn from this:
We can have laws regulating surrogacy and assisted reproduction as a separate issue from same sex marriage.
Like marilyn, I want to see a set of laws that apply equally to all couples, heterosexual or same sex.
Kevin writes:
“Their message is that biology is a weak force for sound parenting; yours appears to be that biology is everything. If you want your message to get through, you now have the burden of clarifying your viewpoint, and your reason for it, in the face of the anti-gays’ opposition.”
Have you been following Marilynn’s comments since she began commenting here. She’s made it abundantly clear – time and time and time again that she supports gay marriage. I don’t understand why you said *their* (who are you referring to exactly) msg is that biology is a weak force for sound parenting and that Marilynn thinks biology is everything. Neither one of those are what anyone has been trying to say.
Diane writes:
“We can have laws regulating surrogacy and assisted reproduction as a separate issue from same sex marriage.”
What kind of “regulation” laws do you think represent the ethical principles that Bruno Nestor Azerot supports?
If biological parents are breeding people to own them, that is also a form of slavery. But most biological parents do not breed children to own them, they just wind up pregnant and then treat their children as children, not to own them. So yes, I’d say that IVF is slavery whether it is done by a married man and woman to own their own offspring or with donor gametes and surrogates to own someone else’s offspring.
Kevin, i am not saying that same-sex parenting is slavery, there are many same-sex parents and single gay parents who wound up parents as a consequence of natural sex, not by commissioning a person to own.
@Karen – I don’t know about Azerot in particular. I think he is against same sex marriage. Apparently most of the mayors in Martinique are against it.
In France in general, though, surrogacy is just illegal. And donor assisted reproduction is strongly regulated, although I don’t know the details.
Kevin I am helping a friend’s husband look for his niece who was taken from a vietnamese orphanage as part of operation baby lift. She was taken without permission of her parents and family. She was put there because she was born with medical problems that they could not attend to at home. She was adopted by French people. Her family never stopped searching for her or hoping to get her back. Someone sold her and it was not her family but she was still sold.
“Tell me Kevin if your mother and father were from a country with no welfare….”
Since you’ve asked, although it’s none of your business, I’ll describe my upbringing. My father divorced his first wife, whom he married they both were in high school and with whom he sired two children. Perhaps as is obvious, she was pregnant and that “facilitated” the marriage.
Not surprisingly, they divorced. My father remarried, a woman he met in college. After three children, he had an affair with his secretary, and divorced my mother to marry his new “love.” I was three years old.
So I had to go live with him and his new wife. I can assure you that biological parenting from separate households far apart is quite unlike biological parenting from under the same roof. My stepmother was physically abusive, and I’ve got the scars to prove it. My father looked the other way, reasoning, I guess, that he didn’t want to risk yet another divorce. Spoiler alert: my father and his mistress DID divorce, though much later. The point is, my father and mother didn’t accidentally divorce and create separate households, compromising their ability to parent me and my siblings. They did it on purpose. So when you talk about gay couples intentionally having a child created and abandoned, I think that’s superior to creating a child and abandoning it later, when it’s conscious of what’s happening to it.
For all intents and purposes, I was not raised by my biological parents. I was raised by an uninterested biological father and a frequently vicious stepmother. I had occasional interaction with a third, angry and disillusioned woman, my biological mother, as required by law. Despite her fits of abusive behavior, I bonded more with my stepmother than my mother, based not on biology (obviously) but on proximity. Go figure. My family specialists believe an extended family contribute positively to a child’s upbringing. Many people in the extended family are not biologically related, obviously.
I am struggling to understand, even apart from my personal experience, why non- or semi-biological parents who want to raise children are somehow deficient to parents who accidentally had a child they don’t want, or who are willing to resolve their adult relationship problems at the expense of their children. Society has already recognized that biological parenting isn’t that crucial: it used to be that the solution for the unwed mother was to put up the baby for adoption, to be raised by non-biological adoptive parents with the appropriate resources to raise a child. Resources were considered more important than biology, in other words. Is that principle no longer (ever) relevant?
Bio parents who give over their children to others as gifts or for sale are acting like they owned them when really they don’t they never had the right to sell their children or their parenthood. Bio parents simply are responsible for raising the children they create. Giving them as gifts or making them to give as gifts is an abuse of the authority position they are in with regard to the young they create.
Kevin
Certainly it is none of my business and I was only posing a hypothetical for your consideration. I appreciate your candor however and I’m a person who wears my heart on my sleeve as well. I’m sorry that you experienced abuse at the hands of anyone responsible for your care whether it was your mom, your dad your stepmother it was wrong and you never should have been subjected to that nor should you have been subjected to the level of separation it soundsl like you experienced from your mother unless of course your father had to keep you from her for your safety for some reason. Nobody has control over whether their parents are fantastic at child rearing or not but it was your right to expect care equally from both and it would not be your father’s right to prevent it unless to protect your safety.
Its not that bio parents are superior to social or legal or adoptive parents, not at all that is not my point at all. Bio parents have an automatic obligation to care for their own young and treating their young not as an obligation but rather as a commodity to be bought sold or traded is dehumanizing. People who are unable to have children with their partners would be wise to approach their eye towards obtaining a child in an ethical way preferrably one where they don’t aid in orchestrating the absense of the bio parent because no amount of love and good caregiving will erase their roll in destroying a family for their own benefit.
Manny, you have got to stop saying that parents own their children! Neither biological nor non-biological parents own their children! People are not owned! Argh!
Just curious, what do you folks make of this:
A colleague of mine confided in me that she was somewhat lukewarm to her fiance in some ways, but noted that he had a good job and would be a good father and besides, she “wasn’t getting any younger,” which I assume meant her biological clock was ticking. “I’m sure we’ll have a nice life….” was her summary.
She really wanted to be a mom. Was she addressing her adult needs here, her desire to be a parent? Is is ok for her to want to be a parent, even if it meant marrying into a compromising situation, because she’s straight? Is she obligated to explain to her future husband that she’s not that interested in him personally but she’s “not getting any younger”?
I’m trying to explore the contours of parenting in the world of Straight Privilege. Are the terms of straight parenting ever selfish, or is that not a possibility for straight people or straight couples? What’s ok and not ok?
People are not owned! Argh!
That is only true when they aren’t ordered on demand, when no money is spent to have children, in order to have children. And I’m not saying that you can sell your children or rent them out or anything, but just because you can’t sell them doesn’t mean you don’t own them and control them. It’s true that parents that didn’t order their children on demand also control them and have the same legal rights, but we don’t think of them as owning their children because they arrived on their own accord, natural and organically and we sympathize with the parent for being burdened with the responsibilities of parenthood. But as more and more parents are ordering their children on demand, we stop sympathizing with parents and respecting their natural family responsibilities, and just see everyone as slave holders, even if they aren’t.
(That is only true when they aren’t ordered on demand, when no money is spent to have children, in order to have children. }
So if a biological couple uses in vitro fertilization to get pregnant with no donor assistance then their moral, ethical, spiritual and legal relationship with their child is different then if they had sex and produced a child? If a doctor gives them advice on how to increase their chances of getting pregnant? Is their child a slave too?
The biggest problem anti-donor advocates have in America is a lack political will and social support for banning these practices. Faced with that there are two ways forward. Focusing on the idea that all people have a right to know their biological history, which could ban anonymity in adoption and donor conception in 10 to 20 years. It would likely make private and international adoptions too but whatever. Or you can name call and bomb throw and get nothing.
Well what interests me now is that the anti-gays are arguing in the DOMA cases before the US Supreme Court that biology isn’t enough to get people (meaning, I suspect, male people) to take care of their kids. That has enormous implications for opposition to non-conventional reproduction and parenting: if biology creates only a weak leak between parent and child, then there’s not much reason to make public policy that either encourages biological parenting, or discourages non-biological parenting. It certainly opens the door for family courts to subordinate biological connections to other kinds of connections, such as who actually wants to raise a particular child. Forcing a man to take care of a child he doesn’t want doesn’t bode well for the child (not in a world where similarly disinterested mothers drive their children into lakes!), not if there is a more interested party.
It’s not clear to me that the fathers on the court will react sympathetically to the argument that they would not care about, or for, their children if they weren’t married to their children’s mother. And the women on the court may not fully appreciate thinking of their own fathers or husbands as similarly uncaring, lacking the coercive power of marriage. But the anti-gays are at the “Hail Mary” (hey, it’s Super Bowl Sunday!) point in the game and not much else has worked for them.
And, of course, straight men make procreation and child-raising decisions based on whatever gay people are doing, so gay people must not be allowed to get married.
My guess is that Justice Breyer will be the one to have the most fun with this absurd argument, since the mischievous Justice Stevens, sadly, is retired. I can’t wait for oral argument next month. Too bad they don’t televise their proceedings; it would make for great reality TV!
@Kevin – Personally, I don’t think it’s really ethical to marry a guy you’re not sure you love just so you can have a second parent to help raise your kids. It certainly isn’t honest and fair to him. I also think from my own experience that raising kids is hard enough on a relationship that you should really love each other going into it in order to be able to work out all the challenges ahead.
My basic take on biology is that children are often better off raised by people other than their biological parents.
I think the issue marilyn is talking about is that many people who have been separated from their biological parents feel a sense of loss. If it turns out that they were separated for a good reason, they can accept the loss. But if it turns out that they were separated from their biological parents because their adoptive parents wanted kids, they feel anger on top of the loss.
@Rob – I’m still getting something different out of what we’re reading. I see a movement that is French with someone from NOM going to see it and lend his support. And I see no reason to think that the man from Martinique is collaborating with NOM or being used by them. He’s not a dummy or an innocent child, he’s a mayor and some kind of representative to the French National Assembly.
What really frustrates me in this whole debate is how hard it is to separate the issue of same sex marriage from assisted reproduction.
In France the law was about same sex marriage and adoption. Apparently there was some effort to include donor insemination for lesbian couples in the law. Then the minister for families tried to change a policy on children who had been illegally made by surrogacy. So the right jumped on that and pulled into the debate.
I’d really wish the two issues didn’t keep getting pulled together by politics. The French clearly had opposition to a lot of assisted reproduction and limited it before the same sex marriage debate.
I wish someone would do a piece on the laws and regulations around the world.
Diane:
“@Kevin – Personally, I don’t think it’s really ethical to marry a guy you’re not sure you love just so you can have a second parent to help raise your kids. It certainly isn’t honest and fair to him. I also think from my own experience that raising kids is hard enough on a relationship that you should really love each other going into it in order to be able to work out all the challenges ahead.”
I’m wondering about your thoughts here, Diane. Would it not be possible to form a lasting marriage without love as a precedent? Do we believe that only the ‘perfect’ beginning accomplishes a satisfactory end? In my opinion, liking someone is an essential ingredient of marriage.
Your thoughts, Diane.
Can’t speak for the French SSM movement, but the US sees it as part and parcel of the gay rights movement.
About not marrying for love- I think its wrong to pretend to be in love and deceive someone. but if they are aware of the situation and willing to accept it, it might not work out but it’s not an ethical problem
So if a biological couple uses in vitro fertilization to get pregnant with no donor assistance then their moral, ethical, spiritual and legal relationship with their child is different then if they had sex and produced a child?
Yes, certainly. The Vatican does a pretty good job explaining the problems with homologous IVF in various encyclicals and statements.
If a doctor gives them advice on how to increase their chances of getting pregnant? Is their child a slave too?
Hmm, I’d say no, because the advice is surely consistent with improving their health and fitness and knowledge and that’s always a good thing. But the desire to have a child, the whole idea of a “wanted child” is what makes children into slaves, whether the couple needs any assistance or advice or not. Children should be welcomed not wanted.