HOLLYWOOD, January 18, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Actress Nicole Kidman and country music star Keith Urban announced yesterday the December 28th birth of their biological child born by a paid surrogate mother. While the pro-life movement is all for life, the circumstances of the birth of Faith Margaret and her conception are of serious concern.
Children have the right to be conceived in the loving union of a husband and wife and carried in the womb by their mother – rights which were intentionally denied to Faith.
Moreover, in most circumstances in vitro fertilization (the means by which the celebrity couple’s child would have been conceived) causes the death of numerous embryonic children. Therefore in all likelihood, several of Faith’s biological siblings were killed in the process. Besides that, numerous studies have shown that IVF is dangerous for the child conceived.
In a statement announcing the birth, Kidman and Urban thanked the “gestational carrier” of their child. Although it is unclear why the couple chose to use a surrogate mother, this conjures up a nightmare scenario. Could this become the new fashion trend for Hollywood starlets who want children? They’ll pay someone else to go through the pregnancy and birth so that they won’t have to stretch their abdomens? Thus children become a commodity to be bought and paid for rather than the gifts of God that they truly are.
Too far fetched? Not really. The Pandora’s box out of which came IVF, surrogacy and related artificial procreation schemes was opened long ago and the nightmare scenarios need not be guessed at as they are already sad realities.
Back in 2001 LifeSiteNews reported on the case of a British woman who refused to abort one of the twins she was carrying – even though she was directed to do so by the California couple who contracted her to be a surrogate mother.
There was a similar case last year in British Columbia where a fertility doctor revealed a dispute between a couple and their surrogate over the couple’s desire to abort their baby. The biological parents discovered through a first trimester ultrasound that the child likely had Down syndrome. The surrogate, a mother of two, initially disagreed with the parents and decided to give birth to the child; however, she eventually decided to abort. The parties had signed an agreement saying that the parents would not be responsible for their child should the woman carry the pregnancy to term against the parents’ wishes.
Children have also been intentionally deprived of mothers and fathers as homosexual couples have used artificial procreation techniques to acquire children.
The situations become ever more ridiculous. In 2006 a toddler was the object of a legal battle with five adults vying for his custody: the homosexual father who paid a surrogate mother $23,000 to impregnate herself with his sperm, the homosexual’s sister, the biological mother, and the boy’s current foster parents.
So what is to be done for childless married couples who desire children and can’t seem to have them naturally? There are natural means of treating fertility problems which are in fact more successful than IVF, although little known. Natural Procreation Technology (NaPro technology) has a better success rate than IVF in treating infertile couples and keeps intact the marital act. In addition to charting fertile times, it screens for and treats hormonal imbalances at the root of most infertility problems.
And if that doesn’t work, consideration should be given to the countless children in need of adoption.
There is no legitimate excuse to engage in artificial means of procreation since it violates the rights of the child, and, in the case of surrogacy, introduces a third party into the intimacy of conception and gestation which are proper only to husband and wife.
In the end, we can rejoice in the birth of Faith Margaret in that she too is a child of God and we hope that all goes well for her. And it may be that Kidman and Urban can hardly be faulted, since in today’s culture of anything goes sexuality their circumstances seem hardly out of the ordinary. However, for the sake of children and family, and thus for the good of society, we must come to an understanding of human sexuality that respects human dignity and natural law.