WOODLAND HILLS, California, December 1, 2015 (LifeSiteNews) – While pro-abortion “Catholic” New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo plans to legalize commercial surrogacy, a case in point demonstrates the ludicrousness of the loveless practice.
A Georgia man hired a California woman to carry his child in her womb, via in vitro fertilization, for $33,000. Practitioners fertilized a 20-year-old donor's three eggs with the man's sperm and implanted the conceived humans in Melissa Cook's womb earlier this year, in the hopes that one might survive.
Melissa Cook has never met the father of the children she carries.
It is normal practice, with in vitro fertilization, to implant more than one conceptus, because in most cases, most or all of the babies die. “Extras” are discarded to die as well.
But all three of the babies implanted in Cook defied the odds. Instead of carrying the Georgia man's baby, Cook was found to be carrying three of his and the 20-year-old stranger's babies – triplets.
Overwhelmed by the thought of fathering triplets, the Georgia man sent Cook a letter demanding that she abort one extra baby. He called it a “selection reduction” and commanded her to kill the child per their surrogate contract.
Cook balked. “They are human beings. I bonded with these kids. This is just not right,” she told The Post.
The Georgia man's lawyer threatened Cook with financial ruin. “His remedies where you refuse to abide by the terms of the agreement, are immense” the lawyer's letter reads, enumerating “loss of all benefits under the agreement, damages in relation to future care of the children [and] medical costs associated with any extraordinary care the children may need.”
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He further demanded that Cook get an abortion in less than 24 hours of receipt of his letter. Cook, who is a mother of four and a surrogate to a fifth child previously, is now 17 weeks pregnant.
“I have to reduce. I'm scared. I don't want to suffer,” Cook, who is separated from her husband, fretted.
“This sad story highlights the fact that surrogacy is based in the sick idea that a human being is a commodity that can be bought and sold, threatened and killed, all at the whim of the powerful,” Stephen Phelan, director of mission communications for Human Life International, told LifeSiteNews.
“Here, a mother is threatened by being held to a contract that she mistakenly signed, understanding too late that she signed away her own freedom and risked the life of her unborn child,” Phelan said.
Director Phelan noted, “These cases are not anomalies. They perfectly follow the logic of slavery and abuse that underlie the life-as-commodity view, even when these practices are sold as affirming life.”
“We pray that those who currently see in vitro fertilization and surrogate motherhood as 'pro-life, pro-woman and pro-child' will reconsider and fight any law that allows or encourages the practices,” Phelan concluded.
Jennifer Lahl, head of the Center for Bioethics and Culture, commented, “Why on Earth would Cuomo want to set up a system like this in New York? It's parent breeding.”