Emily Wax writing at the WaPo:
…The pair liken their fundraiser to an old-fashioned American bake sale — the Web site is called “Will’s Bake Sale!!!” — with a few 21st-century twists. And while gay marriage, surrogacy and the Internet are all modern phenomena, the human desire for baked goods is not. And the Neville-Rehbehns are counting on it.
Categories: The Future of Parenthood
That cake sounds like it costs way more than $70 to make.
There is no right for them to make a baby this way, it should be prohibited. They are passing all the costs on to other people, and treating a human being like a pet or slave or product. I think they should be put in jail for intentionally creating a child from unmarried parents.
But it looks like they will be going ahead with it and no one will stop them, to our great shame as a nation. I wonder which of them is going to be the father, and how that will affect their relationship with each other.
So when the surrogate says she has a bun in the oven……
I don’t see why this is such a big deal. This is going to be a child who is really wanted! I don’t see how having a baby accidentally, because you had sex and didn’t bother to use a condom, a baby you don’t really want, is a better situation.
Apparently, they have been so successful that they have had to quit taking orders for baked goods. Good for them.
Maybe if the children decide to search for their mothers they can hold a bake sale to raise the needed funds.
(Maybe if the children decide to search for their mothers they can hold a bake sale to raise the needed funds.)
And maybe the children’s parents will be completely supportive of the search and funds won’t be an issue. Maybe the children will have a relationship with their mother, a lot of them do. Life for everyone is a crap shoot. To be born is to be guaranteed only death, sooner or later. This idea that parents are obligated to not produce any child will experience suffering is silly. All children suffer – all parents cause that suffering.
Elizabeth said
That was clever as hell.
And Mont:
True but the law prohibits people from abandoning their offspring Mont and the fact that the law makes an exception in the case of gamete donation is horribly unfair to the offspring of those estranged parents. The fact that those parents are manufacturing offspring for other people to raise as their own is deplorable and is a violation of their offspring’s basic human rights to be treated as people not property.
What is wrong with you Mont? How can you say that selling human beings is OK?
The fact that those parents are manufacturing offspring for other people to raise as their own is deplorable and is a violation of their offspring’s basic human rights to be treated as people not property.
And then we’re back to adopting being a horrible thing.
“….the law prohibits people from abandoning their offspring…”
I’m not so sure that’s true. I know at least some localities permit leaving infants at a hospital or fire station, no questions asked. Plus you can turn over a kid to the state under some circumstances. True, you can’t leave a child in a situation where it could suffer or die but if you’re saying that biological parents have to take care of their offspring, I’m not sure that’s true.
And I don’t think it’s abandonment to help create a baby for a couple you know will provide a good home.
Just to stir the pot a little Marilynn, do you consider it abandonment when a soldier father, leaves his children for month’s at a time, to serve in combat? What about the divorced father who moves far from the children who live with his ex-wife? What about the divorced parents who remarry, and turn their attention to their new spouses and new children, with the old children basically yesterday’s news?
“And I don’t think it’s abandonment to help create a baby for a couple you know will provide a good home.”
Kevin, first of all people don’t ‘help’ to create their own offspring, they just do it, they reproduce and there they are. Our offspring are not statues that we sculpt on commission or make on spec and sell or give as gifts, they are human beings, Kevin. You don’t make a person for someone else to raise without violating that persons basic right to be recognized as a person. Minors are their parents responsibility to raise not their property to be traded, gifted or sold.
Second of all how does a gamete donor know that someone else is going to provide their offspring with a good home? At least with court approved adoption there is a process to confirm the identity of the relinquishing parents and ascertain the reason for relinquishing to prevent trafficking. Granted we fail miserably with adoptions in surrogacy cases because they are selling their offspring. There are home studies before placing offspring with a couple and step parent adoption processes when one bio parent remains to raise the child. There are follow ups by the state for the welfare of the child and there is now generally ongoing contact with the child’s original family. Many rights are lost in adoption but at least some attempt is made to prevent the child from being sold/bought into bad situations. Here is a hint that its a bad situation – when a person wants to eliminate half or all of another person’s relatives from their lives in order to keep them all to themselves as if they were their own child. Its so much harder to run when none of their family even knows they exist and everyone keeps saying that their parents are not parents because they did not intend to be parents. Cut their ties to their family and they’ll trip when they try to run and they’ll have to come crawling home to their fake family that wanted them so badly they paid for them..
Kevin do you think making your children specifically to give to people who want them is at all objectifying? The object of their gamete donation agreements is not the gamete but custody of and parental title over their resulting offspring. Whether they are paid or not their child is the object of a private trade agreement. You don’t see anything wrong with that? You don’t find it just a bit off-putting that title over and custody of human beings is something people can privately contract for?
Most gamete donors know absolutely nothing about the individuals that they are mating with. They don’t know if they are their relatives for one thing. I mean with all the genetic testing that is done on their eggs or sperm, you’d think they could run an autosomal DNA test to determine if the buyer is their sibling or aunt or cousin or niece. Heck most people given the choice would opt not to reproduce with anyone closer than 3rd cousin. So right out the gate they don’t care if their kids are born all f’d up and genetically mutated. If they are born with disabilities, they don’t want to know because that might make them want to stop reproducing blindly without any notion of the outcome. Exactly how much care and concern do you think donors put in to this?
“Just to stir the pot a little Marilynn, do you consider it abandonment when a soldier father, leaves his children for month’s at a time, to serve in combat? What about the divorced father who moves far from the children who live with his ex-wife? What about the divorced parents who remarry, and turn their attention to their new spouses and new children, with the old children basically yesterday’s news?”
Abandoning your offspring is to not take care of them and make no provision for their care like relinquishing them for adoption. Abandoning leaves their care to chance.
My my kevin you really don’t think highly of donors after all, looking at the unflattering company you’ve placed them in.
I second Marilyn’s objection to the word “help”. The donor does not “help” the recipient create a child. The donor creates the child.
Elizabeth: I don’t want to sound like an echo of Fannie here, but the dynamics of how you titled this piece and commented here strike me as being rather similar to what I wrote about rather recently on this very site. It’s duly noted that you find the lives of this family quite unusual, but is that really all you want to say about this?
That’s especially frustrating when threads like this seem to be the perfect breeding ground for comments like:
Manny: “I wonder which of them is going to be the father”
Manny, it’s moments like these where I honestly think you’re a troll. Do you honestly believe there is no model for a relationship that’s not possible to reduce down to what you view as the only way for them to really, actually exist?
Wait, don’t answer that. Quite a few commenters here have already made it quite clear that they refuse to believe that their experiences might not be universal in basis and that by “liberating” us, they’re actually doing at least some of us more harm.
Kisarita: “My my kevin you really don’t think highly of donors after all, looking at the unflattering company you’ve placed them in.”
Active duty combat veterans? Wow, that’s something (and not in a good way) to see someone disparage that line of work! Or did someone not even bother to finish reading Kevin’s comment? (Seriously, those and donors are the group he most directly draws a parallel between.)
Matt N wrote: “It’s duly noted that you find the lives of this family quite unusual, but is that really all you want to say about this?”
I did not at all get what you got from her simple straightforward posting. It’s interesting how this marriage is leading to a baby in that there are many ethical issues involved with “donation” and “surrogacy”. And this does tie in the the difference of opinions regarding marriage.
“Here is a hint that its a bad situation – when a person wants to eliminate half or all of another person’s relatives from their lives in order to keep them all to themselves as if they were their own child.”
Marilynn, divorced couples do this all the time!
I really, really don’t get this obsession with biology and parenting. It really marginalizes children who weren’t raised by their biological parents, and it marginalizes parents doing a terrific job raising children they didn’t create.
Divorce and remarriage has created huge numbers of non-biological children/parenting situations and it’s a challenge to be either a stepchild or a step parent. Let’s give these people a little credit, shall we?
A wanted child should always be preferred over an unwanted child, biology notwithstanding.
The difference is all about INTENTION
My first reaction when I saw the article was why in the world should I pay to help someone get a baby? There are so many other charities out there.
But on talking it over, it seems that it is sad to think that hiring someone to have your baby is sometimes easier than adopting one.
@Diane M.,
Diane, I don’t think you understand what goes into having a child through donation and surrogacy. Do you think a couple just goes out and “hires” someone? Then sits home and looks at pretty pictures of ultrasounds?
Like adoption, having a child through donation and surrogacy takes several years, with challenges, decisions and potential for joy, heartbreak, and miracles common to what all intended parents face.
(The difference is all about INTENTION)
But only here. Private adoption in the US is full of this type of intention too. So is international adoption. So is non-private adoption, particularly of infants. These things also involve big honking wads of cash that parents often have events to pay for. If you are really concerned about the rights of children you would be fighting for the rights of children. Not deriding a subset of people you feel are violating the rights these children should have. It makes your argument suspect.
Mont says “So is non-private adoption, particularly of infants. These things also involve big honking wads of cash that parents often have events to pay for. If you are really concerned about the rights of children you would be fighting for the rights of children. Not deriding a subset of people you feel are violating the rights these children should have. It makes your argument suspect.” Oh yes and I do feel strongly that much of adoption needs to change in order to be more ethical. There is some attempt to protect children from being sold with court approved adoption but not nearly enough.
(Oh yes and I do feel strongly that much of adoption needs to change in order to be more ethical. There is some attempt to protect children from being sold with court approved adoption but not nearly enough.)
You do, but many others don’t. People use this cry of intention to deride family formation strategies they disprove of and ignore intention when it involves strategies they approve of. It’s like magic.
“The difference is all about INTENTION”
I’m not sure what this is meant to address but if it’s supposed to create a distinction between accidental biological parents and intentional non-biological parents, then I’d like further explanation.
If it’s meant to distinguish between biological parents who were fine when their kids were first born but then divorced, that divorce wasn’t an accident. It was intentional, and perfectly legal and quite acceptable socially, regardless of the impact on the children.
The distinction between creating a child for someone else to raise, and creating a child you intend to raise yourself (or accept having to raise) but later decide you found a new mate and want that (non-biological) mate to do the parenting, is superficial. We’re talking about when something happens, essentially, not if.
It is cruel to ask a child to bond with two adults, and then separate that child from one of the adults and accept a new adult in his or her place. Better for a child to be raised by two non-biological parents secure in their relationship and eager to raise a child together, than face the hardship of losing a parent.
Other issues to consider, if biological parenting is so gosh-darn important:
What about biological parents who hire au pairs and/or nannies to do the child care?
Shipping kids off to boarding school at the earliest possible age?
Biological mothers who return work full-time weeks after their child’s birth?
Kevin, why are you bringing up unwanted children? Does this somehow decrease the number of unwanted children? I don’t think so.
The best thing is for them to stay childless. They do not have a right to a child, it is wrong for them to have a child.
And Matt it will matter which one is the father, you can’t hide that from people. It will effect their relationship. Only one of them is the father.
“Kevin, why are you bringing up unwanted children?”
Well I guess I thought it was obvious but the outcomes for wanted children might be substantially different than the outcomes for unwanted children.
Being the biological parent isn’t the key to successful parenting; wanting a child and wanting to parent is. Biology is overrated.
Mont.,
I echo Diana M., there need to be reforms to adoption alongside reforms to reproductive technology use. Many of the ethical concerns are similar if not the same.
Kevin,
I agree with you that the problems stemming from the failures of some biological parents are pressing (lives are being destroyed), and that biology doesn’t guarantee one’s success as a parent. It would be interesting to see sourced data on the relationship between “wanting a child” and successful parenting. I don’t know that I have ever seen a data set on that particular question, but I am sure that they exist. Any links would be appreciated.
Acknowledging that a disturbingly large group of biological parents fail their kids, and that this should be a focus (if not the primary focus) for people concerned about child welfare, does that lessen the need to also address some of the ethical concerns surrounding the formation of families using reproductive technology? What if couples unable to conceive, but who want a child and want to parent, may potentially create difficult and painful situations for their children because of a bad process? How do we address that? I ask that honestly, because I think it is the central question of this issue.
Obviously these parents, including same-sex couples, love and care about their kids and don’t want to intentionally hurt them. If one is going to all the trouble to adopt or secure a child through reproductive technology, one obviously is invested in the child and their future. But sometimes our best intentions are thwarted by circumstance (as the testimonies of donor conceived individuals who feel loss and anger about not knowing their biological origins because of bad policy evidence). What policies might help better align circumstance and intention so that no donor conceived individual feels loss or anger?
But why bring it up, when it is not the alternative? These guys aren’t about to go have an unwanted child if we ban donor conception, are they? The plight of unwanted children is a good thing to bring up when discussing unmarried people having sex, but that’s not involved in this discussion is it? I think this scenario leads to more people conceiving unwanted children they are not committed to being primary parents of, not less, by making it seem unimportant if people have children outside of marriage.
And intention is precisely what makes conception unethical. Even if a man and a woman are married and using their own sperm and egg, it is unethical to conceive a child on purpose, because it makes their child (and therefore all children) into a product to be ordered up and owned because it is wanted. Children should never be ordered up on demand, they should always be responsible for their own life and thankful for their parents for making room for them, not resentful of their parents for ordering them into their lives.
Manny, birth control and abortion created the concept of the wanted or the unwanted child.
It is surely the minority point of view to engage freely in sexual activity with no specific intention to conceive but to be willing to react joyously if one does.
by the time they get around to the birth, most people are pretty happy, although most of them also have some ambivalence during the pregnancy itself. This is true for planned as well as unplanned pregnancies.
you have this idea anyone who wasn’t trying intentionally to conceive doesn’t really want the kid which is not the reality.
(and occasionally some people who were trying to conceive don’t want it either).
(What policies might help better align circumstance and intention so that no donor conceived individual feels loss or anger?)
If that is your goal we all need to stop having children altogether. I was raised in an intact biological family with a stay at home mother in the idyllic ’50s and I have pretty strong feelings of loss and anger from my childhood. I have a cousin that was adopted from an abusive home on a reserve as an infant and she feels loss and anger. So do all her adopted siblings.
There are lots of issues that need to be addressed around adoption, donor conception and what rights children have separate from their parents, but no policy solution is going to insure no children carones loss and anger out of their childhood. In fact pretty much all children carry these feelings to one degree or another.
Can you explain why this impossible goal should only stop donor conception not adoption or outright parenthood.
Right, the very fact that someone is trying to conceive indicates there is an underlying depression or mental illness or angst that having a child is not going to cure, and it is wrong to allow a child to be given to that unhappy home. Children shouldn’t be created to serve adult desires, especially unhappy covetous adults who don’t respect human rights.
Note that I used the adjective “better” instead of “perfectly” to modify the word align. I am not asking how to perfectly aligning circumstance and intention so that no donor conceived individual feels loss and anger. That simply isn’t going to happen. You are misinterpreting what I said.
What policies might better align circumstances and intentions to reduce negative consequences like feelings of loss and anger?
You know, sometimes people who oppose donor conception are accused of being against it just because they oppose same sex marriage and parenting.
But I wonder if sometimes people support donor conception because they support same sex marriage and parenting?
I think we need to listen to people who were conceived this way. Their argument that it matters if you create someone on purpose to give them up makes sense to me logically. The fact that some people conceived this way regret it is even more powerful to me.
“If that is your goal we all need to stop having children altogether.”
But people have a basic human right to marry and have sex with their spouse and reproduce offspring and a right to raise them according to their customs and beliefs, even though their children, like all children, will probably suffer from feelings of loss and anger. That might even be an essential part of life. There are also competing rights of the child to be protected from abuse and neglect that sometimes override the right to raise one’s children, but never the right to have sex with one’s spouse. Married sex and reproduction is inherently ethical.
I like how the argument seems to now be “so what, lots of people have feelings of loss and anger, that is just life” because that’s what we need to say to people who feel loss and anger about their infertility and childlessness. But we should do a lot more to protect people from suffering infertility so that as few people as possible feel that loss and anger.
“the very fact that someone is trying to conceive indicates there is an underlying depression or mental illness or angst that having a child is not going to cure”
And this is based on what evidence???
or what logic???
gazillions of people are conceived intentionally; you would never know the difference. like when people who’ve been using birth control for years stop it intentionally.
That’s why birth control denigrates human dignity, because now not using birth control is seen as a form of intentionally having children. Even when the couple never used birth control and was properly being “open” to creating new life, other people can’t help but think they intentionally had the child, and don’t feel a need to support the couple or their baby as much, or feel any joy for them. It’s similar to how abortion being legal makes men irresponsible because now it is always the woman’s choice to have the baby, it is never the man’s choice, even though they both chose to have sex, that is no longer the same thing as choosing to maybe have a baby.
The evidence of depression or angst and mental illness is that they intentionally conceived a baby. If they weren’t depressed or mentally ill they would not do that, they’d be happy as they are.
(What policies might better align circumstances and intentions to reduce negative consequences like feelings of loss and anger?)
Again, all children feel loss and anger coming out of their childhood, not just the donor conceived. Why are you so concerned with policies that will help the donor conceived but not the adopted and the naturally born? Childern either have these ameliorating rights or they don’t, assigning those rights based on conception seems unfair to me. I just watched a documentary about a guy whose parents adopted him, but his older sister was his mother. What about his rights? What about their intentions? Some families have a dozen or more kids and don’t educated the girls one more minute than they are legally obligated to. What about their daughters? What about their intentions? People in the Nationa Vanguard have children to propagate the white race and holocaust denial, quite a number of people pass of the children of affairs as the children of their marriage. Are their children’s pain and loss to be considered? What about their intentions?
There is a whole wide word of damage being done to children, regardless of how they are conceived but we don’t ever talk about them. We just mock a deride gay people having bake sales and wring our hands over their poor abused children.
Look, I’ve said again and again that I agree with Marilyn. That her argument is the most likely to triumph. Because it is a universal argument, that applies to all children, all the time and everywhere, regardless of how they were conceived. It assigns all children a clear right to their own genetic history independent of the intention and desires of their parents. Anytime you want support for that I’m all in. But as long as your only concern is donor children and the intention of their parents your concern is not really about the children at all. It’s about restricting the parents.
I love Marilynn’s ideas as well, but I do not see her legal remedies as being even remotely possible. There are hurdles and road blocks to it left right and center.
Mont,
Do you think my asking for policies specific to donor-conceived individual means I don’t care about adopted kids or natural born kids, or any sense of loss and anger they might experience because of the challenges they might experience in life?
I agree with you and Marilynn that children do have a basic set of rights, regardless of how they are conceived, which include a right to know their origin story among other things. But it seems obvious to me that, depending on a child’s family structure, how her rights are secured is going to be different. Policy should effectively deal with the unique challenges posed by different family structures, including (but not limited to) family structures requiring donor-conception to exist. That is why I am asking the question in the first place.
Also, I have already made it clear that I don’t think the intentions of parents using this technology are generally the issue, but rather that their good intentions are running up against some unintended negative consequences caused by the technology being used, and until we can resolve those negative consequences, then the continued use of this technology raises some serious ethical questions.
I’ll be really honest, I am open to restricting the access of potential parents to certain technologies if that means a child’s rights are preserved. Not because I have anything against those parents or think they will be bad parents – but because the child in question is always the most vulnerable party, who is dependent on the rest of society (primarily through the state) protecting her rights, so my obligation to her comes before my obligation to grant a potential parent access to any technology.
My opposition, you’ll note, is centered on the child, not the parents. The question I originally asked was aimed at finding policies that better ensure a child’s rights are secure while also allowing couples who need this technology to conceive can do so ethically.
Thank you Mont. I want people in general to have equal rights and equal protection and you cannot get there by continuing to isolate one group from another. Karen you said it before there is no such thing as a donor. Let’s act like it.
Matthew,
Do you think that there is anything ethically wrong with the practice of intentionally creating a child to be sold/gifted/donated away to others to “create their family”? Do you see anything wrong about this practice even if done will full openness and honesty?
(But it seems obvious to me that, depending on a child’s family structure, how her rights are secured is going to be different.)
This doesn’t seem that obvious to me at all.
(I am open to restricting the access of potential parents to certain technologies if that means a child’s rights are preserved.)
Then you’re not going to get anywhere. Because you are not promoting a universal right for children – you want to restrict the rights of adults. You may succeed in restricting access to technology, but people will just find work arounds that damage children even more. Then the state will respond with more draconian punishments that hurt, what a surprise, children! There will be more people involved, more court decisions required, the state department will get involved.
mythago
Adoption and guardianship react to family separation while donor reproduction and parental abandonment cause it. Can’t compare and contrast adoption with donor reproduction and parental abandonment. It’s possible to have adoptive parents and a parent who was a gamete donor, they are not mutually exclusive.
Court approved adoption is suppose to protect minors from being sold by their biological parents but it’s not working. Courts should not be approving people to adopt children when those children were the objects of private trade agreements between the prospective adoptive parent and the bio parent or a donor or even a middle man. The only ethical adoptions are those where the adoptive parent paid nothing to take on the responsibility of raising someone’s child for them. That should be paid by the state entirely. The state should be thrilled to find people willing to take over the burden of raising abandoned kids it should not cost prospective adoptive parents a dime. It should be about finding adoptive parents for abandoned kids, not finding abandoned kids for people who want to be adoptive parents. That turns abandoned kids into a hot commodity with search agents and finder fees to hasten the process. It turns bio parents and bio families and cryobanks into farmers and share croppers growing babies for consumers. Its wrong. There are ethical adoptions mostly through foster care where the adoptive parent paid nothing. The most critical thing in making an adoption ethical is that the adoptive parent had nothing to do with the reason the parent failed to raise them. The adoptive parent should not have hired them to make a baby and abandon them.
If people expect to be treated fairly and expect nothing more than what everyone else has, I cannot see on what grounds our government could justify continuing to say no. There is more than one way to equalize things. If not having to be accountable for their offspring is such a great idea for donors why not make it that way for everyone? Why not change the law so that nobody is responsible for raising their own offspring, if its good enough for donors then its good enough for everyone. Not being accountable for our offspring means that people will be free to create as many offspring as possible without fear that a positive paternity or maternity test will tether them to a lifetime of support payments. Think of how many more unwanted foundlings there would be for all the people who want to be parents if we simply annahialated the modern paternity suit; children would only be entitled to support from people who really wanted to be their parents. There would be enough people who want to take care of all those abandoned kids right? We sure about that? One way to hasten kids acceptance into new families that want them would be to simply drop the court approval process and let everyone just privately contract for control and parental title over minors. If its good enough for donor offspring or good enough for a kid whose mother commits paternity fraud then why not drop all that paperwork and pretense that goes along with formal adoption? If we really don’t care who a kid’s bio parents are or why they are not raising them and if we really don’t care if they are giving their kids up in exchange for goods or money then every formal adoption is just a waste of time. If its not being done to protect minors from being trafficked then whats the point why do it for some minors but not all lets just let people draft their own private contracts and let them work out the terms of their own agreements. Also why are we bothering to keep track of birth data as vital statistics if there is no expectation that the child is the offspring of the parents named? Its a big waste of our tax dollars medical research on heritable disease using birth data so mired in genetic inaccuracy as to undermine the credibility of any results they might get. How accurate can results be when on paper it looks like women in their 50′s healthier and more fertile than ever? Forget keeping track of all that stuff; medical accuracy in recording parental identity is a public health issue to track and manage the spread of disease in the general population, if we cannot reasonably rely upon the medical accuracy of the information collected about a person’s parents when they are born then WTF forget it why bother its a big old waste of time. The margin of error is enormous now we could balance the budget with all the money we’d save by not funding all those CDC programs. Just assign each body born a social security number and let people contract back and forth for custody and control. Just recognize whoever has the pink slip as being the parent. We could model the system after the DMV you can do a transfer of title or register your car on line now too. Just keep track of all the people by vin number or something. Seriously if where people come from is of no consequence whatsoever and there is no concern over bio parents abusing their ability to create people like merchandise for sale then open it up to the free market and let the most fertile among us live the American dream. Fair now, lets be fair about this.
If one of these guys had offspring he created with some random chick and both he and she were accountable to their offspring as parents and the guys spouse was going to help raise and support the kid as his step father rather than father I’d have no problem at all buying a cake from them to help decorate the nursery or help pay for the Mom’s maternity wardrobe. I think the child would benefit enormously from the legal protections gained by having a legal step parent so please allow gays and lesbians to marry. No kid benefits when their parents’ spouse hijacks their identity and gets named as parent on their birth record, they loose half their family to gain a step family that they could have had in addition to their own actual bio families on both sides. There is no reason to sequester the kid from half their family unless like in Matts case you can prove abuse and fear for the child’s safety. Then fine. but no abuse no dice be responsible and don’t be greedy and possessive. Plenty of love to go around.
I don’t think this is necessarily true, because I don’t think that a “right to have children” exists. The government doesn’t (and can’t) procure children for people.
To give a little background, I support marriage equality not because I believe in a “right to marry.” Rather, I support marriage equality, because I believe in a constitutional right to equal protection under the law. It’s not nebulous at all. It’s right there in Constitution for anyone to read.
(BTW, Loving vs. Virginia did not assert a “right to marry,” as I’ve seen some people claim. It was a 14th amendment case.)
The danger of just asserting rights is that such an assertion is non-falsifiable. It can always be logically countered by an opposite assertion of rights, especially when both rights can be stated positively. For instance, if you say, “People have a right to children,” I can say, “Children have a right, whenever possible, to be raised by their own biological parents.”
All that to say this: If the laws Matthew is talking about apply equally to everyone, then they are not infringing on any rights. If you think they would infringe on rights, well, prove it… or at least tell me what you’re basing your assertion on. Do you know of any court cases that interpret the Bill of Rights as giving people a right to children? Do you have a message from God? You’re in Canada, right? Is there a Canadian right to children? (I don’t know much about Canadian law.) As far as I know, there isn’t in America.