"My babies are for sale"

January 30, 2008

"My babies are for sale"

According to this article in the Times online, Jill Hawkins is at it again, planning yet another "surrogate" pregnancy. Britain's most prolific child producer has already given (or rather, sold) 7 of her own children for about 12,000 UK pounds each. Now she is planning to get impregnated yet again, for another 12,000 pounds, as well as for a temporary feeling of being loved, valued and cared for (by the drooling parents-to-be) and another temporary "fix" of having meaning in life.

As a traditional surrogate, Jill is not impregnated with embryos created with the sperm and eggs of another couple. Rather, she receives the sperm of the man who is commissioning the child, and the sperm then fertilizes her own egg. The children she bears are truly and fully her own, and she is their biological mother.

But Jill claims, once again, not to have any attachment to the children that are her own. All she really craves is the pregnancy itself, she says.

Um, yeah. I guess that must be why she has attempted suicide in the past. I guess that's why she has, in the past, been diagnosed with heavy depression and why she is still dependent on antidepressants.

Among the comments to the article, Michael Moore of Slough, UK makes a very good point - it is obvious that Jill Hawkins is "actually using 'serial pregnancy' to overcome her own ongoing trauma."

Should this be legal? No way. I do feel bad for infertile couples, I really do - BUT their own pain, misery and desire for children does not give them the right to exploit people like Jill Hawkins, who are ready to sell their own babies for some love that they've never gotten in life (and for a nice lump sum of cash too, of course).

Once again I'd like to point out that we cannot count on self-regulation by women like Jill Hawkins, by the infertile couples or even by the fertility clinics, brokers and agents who spring up like mushrooms after rain in order to reap the middlemen bonuses. There is only one way to prevent these reproductive abuses that leave children as the greatest victims, and that is by government regulation and its enforcement.

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Stop the Baby Trade

Yes, it is a baby trade, like the slave trade of old. Babies have become consumer products, accessories to our lifestyles. They are like pets, those cute and cuddly babies. And like pets, they can be made to your liking. Just buy the sperm at your nearest sperm bank, purchase an egg from your local egg dealer, and rent a surrogate womb. And in 9 months, bring home a baby without a pregnancy, without even a dent in your schedule!

There is supply and there is demand. Babies are disposable: their value and worth depend on being "wanted". As embryos they can receive a life or death sentence based on a screening of their genetic traits. They can be frozen indefinitely, donated for research or simply killed. In the womb they can be "selectively reduced". They belong to whomever they were "intended" for.

Apparently, adults have a "right" to a baby. And before they are born, babies have no rights at all. They can be bought and sold, or traded from person to person.

Even after they are born, some of their natural rights are not recognized or respected. They had better not complain about not having their "natural" or biological parents. If they mind, they are ungrateful. After all, we cuddle them and spoil them and shower them with love - just like our pets.

Well, it's time to stop the baby trade. Infertility is tragic. So is being panhandled by your own genetic parents and being raised by biological strangers. So is being created in a laboratory only to be frozen as "surplus" or screened out and left to die because you are "unwanted".

Children have not consented to these things. Their own parents, their supposed protectors, have allowed these things to happen to them. Adults have selfishly allowed their reproductive urges to trample on the fundamental rights and needs of their own children. But now, as many of these children come of age and we hear their cries of pain, it is time to admit that what reproductive technologies have given to parents, they have also taken away from children.

Sometimes doing the right thing requires a lot of sacrifice. This is one of those times. We need to set aside our adult desires in order to protect children's rights. Let's see babies as human beings who are our equals. Let’s admit that we have no right to harm others to get what we want. Let’s stand up for those who don’t have a signature line on the consent forms, yet who will be forever affected by the decisions taken.

We will find that by protecting the weakest, we are also protecting ourselves. The rights of children are tied to the rights of adults. Children have a right to their own parents; and those parents also have a natural right to know and to educate their own biological children. These natural rights cannot be eliminated, only violated.

Let’s stand up for the natural human rights of children: their right to life from the moment of conception, their right to be carried in the womb of their own biological mother, and their right to know and be raised by their own biological parents.