The Surrogacy Shop of Horrors
In 2011, authorities uncovered a series of crimes committed by Philadelphia abortionist Kermit Gosnell. They described his clinic, which targeted poor and vulnerable women, as a “house of horrors.” Gosnell was allowed to harm so many people because abortion clinics were allowed to operate underregulated and without any serious oversight.
Earlier this month, investigators used the same phrase, “house of horrors” to describe what they discovered in the home of Los Angeles residents Guojon Xuan and Silvia Zhang. The couple has been charged with child abuse, after acquiring 21 children—all but two through surrogacy—and placing them under the care of nannies. According to a Washington Post article that described the story:
The children suffered daily beatings from cruel nannies as the couple watched over a network of surveillance cameras and laughed, according to prosecutors. The couple allegedly recruited women across the country to serve as surrogates, promising them that they were just looking for another child to grow their family.
Defenders of commercial surrogacy often justify the practice with the pain of childlessness and the legitimate desire people have to become parents. Never mentioned are the wild west realities of this largely unregulated market, including how vulnerable women are enticed and mistreated, and how children are treated as commodities of the wealthy.
This couple, the Washington Post article reported, is quite wealthy, with nearly 300 bank accounts—one that contained $70 million—as well as $10 million worth of “antique sculptures and specialty alcohol.” The troubling part is not the money, however, but that the couple apparently considered these children among their vast collection of worldly possessions and were able to acquire them in a highly unregulated market.
In fact, as conservative pundit Allie Beth Stuckey noted, other than the abuse, no part of this story describes anything illegal:
Children are treated as commodities, and it’s completely legal. This couple just happened to get in trouble because they lied and abused the kids. Everything else they did—recruiting women, renting wombs, buying and selling children to random buyers without background checks—is legal. Commercial surrogacy is the legal loophole for child trafficking. Ban it.
In other words, corruption is not a bug of commercial surrogacy. It’s a feature. As Katy Faust, founder of the children’s rights group Them Before Us told the Colson Center, this case is not surrogacy gone wrong:
. . . This is surrogacy as planned. Everything that took place wasn’t just legal, it happened in the most highly regulated state in the country: California. Why is the Golden State a hub for baby manufacturing? Because the contract reigns supreme, over and above the objections of the surrogate, the well-being of the children, and pesky ethical considerations such as mass-producing children or handing them over to the elderly or foreign nationals.
Stories like this can make us angry, but we should no longer be shocked by them. The famous definition of insanity, often credited to Albert Einstein, is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. The recurring assumption in our social debates about sexuality and reproductive ethics is that we can remove oversight and accountability in the name of autonomy, and our worst fears will not come true. For example, abortion advocates insist that any regulations or oversight on abortion providers were needlessly restrictive barriers to “reproductive rights,” but are then surprised that an abortion doctor would cut corners and endanger lives by operating an unsafe and illegal clinic.
That’ll never happen!, we were told. Until, of course, it did.
Like the abortion industry, the surrogacy industry is also under-regulated and enables the abuse of children. In fact, the industry loopholes are gaping. Surrogates are scammed, forced into terms that impact their ability to make decisions in the best interests of the baby they carry. They lose rights, sometimes to adults they have never met.
Because regulating, much less ending, commercial surrogacy is nowhere near the top of the action-item list for either political party, Christians must become louder in their opposition to it. If citizens and politicians refuse to say anything, what is supposed to never happen will continue to happen.
Photo credit: ©Getty Images/Wlablack
