(LifeSiteNews) — Pro-life conservatives have encountered a bizarre rebuttal to their justified indignation over same-sex surrogacy. Critics have alleged that conservatives like Allie Beth Stuckey aren’t authentically pro-life, or that they somehow disregard life’s value by opposing the practice of same-sex couples custom-ordering human beings.
But surrogacy in itself is a direct affront to the value of human life and its inherent dignity. Besides leading to the destruction of embryos, surrogacy manipulates the beauty of family and reproduction while commodifying both mother and child in the process.
Take, for example, the same-sex couple featured in a video that caught attention last summer, discussing the various factors they considered while searching for an egg donor. “So, we wanted her to have lovely big eyes,” one of the men says while holding the baby. “I wanted her to have really thick hair because I’ve had two hair transplants. I wanted her to have a really wide nice smile and to look like a kind person.” The other man interjected: “Yeah, and we wanted her to be creative because we love the arts.”
Dave Rubin, meanwhile, has compared the process of finding an egg donor to searching for mates on the hook-up app Tindr. And he’s right. Both Tindr and egg “donation” (which is a lucrative market) treat people as objects to be purchased or efficiently consumed in the marketplace. Rather than honoring woman’s procreative abilities, the Tindr-esque model exploits her body.
More recently, a BBC journalist reinforced the cold commodification of human life by describing his and his partner’s new baby as “hand luggage.” These types of statements point to a fundamentally self-centered view of relating to the most vulnerable among us.
RELATED: BBC journalist in same-sex ‘marriage’ hit with backlash for celebrating new ‘hand luggage’ baby
Without an eye toward God, the practice of generating new human life becomes another tool in our pursuit of self-actualization or lifestyle fulfillment – something reflected in Rubin’s discussion with Daily Wire host Jordan Peterson last year. Rubin framed his pursuit of surrogacy – at least in part – in terms of not wanting to be just another aging homosexual who goes to bars in his free time.
What happens, though, if or when those children become less appealing in Rubin’s scheme of self-actualization? Or what if the baby mentioned above turns out to not be the creative, artistic type that her new “parents” hoped she would be?
It’s unclear but, perhaps shedding light on the “pro-life” aspect of this debate, Rubin has already said he would have aborted the children if they had severe disabilities. It’s also worth mentioning that the process of in vitro fertilization is itself dehumanizing and usually results in embryos that are later destroyed.
Rather than seeking to remedy an existing need, same-sex couples are creating new ones via surrogacy. They are deliberately choosing to bring life into a disordered family structure where the children will likely be measured against how much they’ve fulfilled their parents’ interests. They will also face legal and logistical barriers inpursuing the extremely important maternal-child bond.
Nonetheless, Rubin has portrayed himself as a “hero.” And, like others on social media, he has managed to feel comfortable advancing same-sex surrogacy as a conservative position. It’s hard to imagine the same happening 20 or even, maybe, 10 years ago.
RELATED: New EU initiative could force same-sex ‘marriage,’ surrogacy on all member states
But the GOP and current conservative movement have developed such distorted priorities that same-sex surrogacy now seems like a natural evolution rather than aberration from its ideology — which, at this point, appears to consist in some kind of vague pursuit of “freedom” and capitalism rather than being anchored in traditional values.
Among other things, RNC-sponsored pride month has signaled to young Republicans that they can pursue sexual deviance and abandon traditional morality so long as they oppose wokeness and tax hikes. Amplifying that signal, the party’s last president — Donald Trump — recently joined congressional Republicans in backing legislation that affirmed “gay marriage.”
It’s worth mentioning that despite having Republican majorities in Congress, Trump never fulfilled his campaign promise to defund Planned Parenthood. What he did make sure to do, though, was slash tax rates for corporations and massively deregulate the economy. As an individual policy, deregulation and tax cuts may be economically powerful. It doesn’t seem inevitable either that, as some have suggested, persistent deregulation would engender amorality in personal choices in addition to economic ones. But in abandoning traditional morality and emphasizing that of the market, Republicans have guided their voters to supplant the former with the latter.
Under this framework, it makes sense that “families” would no longer respect natural law and God. Instead, guided by a near-totalizing mentality of the market, they exploit technology and utilize human life in a way that helps them efficiently realize their “American dream” and whatever that’s supposed to mean in its current iteration.