Lily Collins' is the latest celebrity to announce the birth of a child via a surrogate — and the announcement has sparked yet another debate surrounding the ethics of the practice.
Allie Beth Stuckey of “Relatable” isn’t a fan of Collins' choice.
“How do we get to the point where we are now renting wombs and in some cases buying children via egg and sperm donation?” Stuckey asks, noting that criticizing surrogacy is often met with manipulation and emotional games.
“If you show compassion for the surrogate, if you show compassion for the baby who has just been torn away from the only body and smell and heartbeat that she knows, you are being hateful towards the parents who wanted to do this,” Stuckey says, adding, “Because in all of these, in all forms of reproductive technology, what is being prioritized more than the well-being of the child is the wish of the parent.”
While many women on the left have protested stricter abortion laws by dressing up in dystopian garb, Stuckey explains that those people are missing the point, as renting a womb via surrogacy is “actually akin to ‘The Handmaid’s Tale.’”
“For some reason, liberals love to dress up in their red robes and pretend that Margaret Atwood’s novel is about abortion, like allowing children who have been conceived to not be murdered and to be born. That’s not what it’s about. It is actually much closer to the surrogacy industry,” she says.
In “The Handmaid’s Tale,” rich women who struggle with infertility use lower-class women against their will to carry their children for them.
“I know people say, ‘Well, it’s voluntary, and so if everyone consents to it, what’s the big deal?’ There are a lot of things that people consent to that are morally wrong,” Stuckey says. “Many of them may say that they are consenting to what they do, that does not mean that offering your body for a price is moral.”
The argument doesn’t end at whether or not it’s morally wrong to financially incentivize a woman to loan out her body but rather whether or not it’s morally wrong to tear a baby from the only mother he or she has known for nine months.
“It is physiologically true that at the moment of birth, the child longs for the woman who has been carrying him or her,” Stuckey says, noting that it’s even more egregious in cases where it’s two men renting out another woman’s womb.
“In the case of two men, they’re actually purchasing the egg-seller, they’re purchasing a separate surrogate, they’re taking the baby away from the biological mother, they’re taking the baby away from the woman who carried that child, and they are intentionally raising a child who is motherless,” she explains.
“I mean, what a cruel, draconian, demonic, social experiment that we are forcing un-consenting children into in the name of ‘love is love’ and inclusion,” she adds.
To enjoy more of Allie’s upbeat and in-depth coverage of culture, news, and theology from a Christian, conservative perspective, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.
Former "The Bachelor" star and self-professed Christian Colton Underwood made headlines years ago when he came out as homosexual.
Now, Underwood has announced alongside his husband, Jordan C. Brown, that they’re expecting a baby boy via surrogacy in the fall. Underwood even created a podcast called "Daddyhood," as he’s been pursuing “daddyhood” for two years now.
“It’s almost always a baby boy,” Allie Beth Stuckey notes, before explaining that Underwood had been struggling with his sperm count before he was able to find an “egg seller.”
“The reason again I don’t say egg donor is because it’s only called egg donor because of a technicality. It’s not legal to sell human tissue in the United States, and so egg donors say that they are being paid for their time and their effort, not actually their eggs,” Stuckey says.
“But we all know the truth. They’re not donating their eggs; they are selling their eggs,” she adds.
In an interview with Men’s Health, Underwood explained that he and his husband wanted the “egg seller” to be “somebody deep and cool.”
“I believe in nature versus nurture. So give us the basics, and we can show this kid love,” he continued.
Stuckey disagrees, quipping, “I’m not sure that you actually believe in nature, because you are denying that a child needs a mother.”
Underwood related the process of finding an “egg seller” to using dating apps, which Stuckey also finds disturbing — as YouTuber Shane Dawson, who got his baby boy via IVF with his husband, related it to looking through catalogs.
“They literally go through catalogs of women, not that different than prostitution, and they choose who is going to be the genetic mother,” Stuckey says.
But it’s not as simple as just choosing a woman and giving her their sperm.
“There’s the egg retrieval first, from the so-called egg donor. And then there’s the IVF process where they are using the sperm from these two men and they are mixing it together with the eggs that were retrieved and they’re creating embryos out of that genetic material, and then they are implanting the embryo that is created, that is selected, into a different woman,” Stuckey explains.
That woman is the surrogate, who then has to take hormones in order to prepare her body for the foreign entity that will be placed in her uterus.
“That’s very dangerous for the embryo, by the way. It can also be very dangerous health-wise for the surrogate because this is a very unnatural process,” Stuckey says. “The woman’s body can reject this little embryo.”
The reason they use an “egg seller” separate from the surrogate is also completely unnatural.
“Why do they have to be legally separate? So that neither woman can claim motherhood, so that neither woman can say that they are bonded to this child. Even the law recognizes that there is this strong, fierce, biological bond between the mom and a child,” Stuckey says.
“It just makes it easier for everyone except for the baby, who will never know his biological mom and also is immediately ripped away from the only body, the only woman, the only home he has ever known immediately at birth.”
“Again, treating a child much worse than we treat puppies and kittens in the United States, who legally we have to keep with their mother for six to 12 weeks after birth,” she adds.
To enjoy more of Allie’s upbeat and in-depth coverage of culture, news, and theology from a Christian, conservative perspective, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.
How can we use natural remedies to allow God’s healing to work in our lives? Dr. Josh Axe recently joined “Relatable” to answer that question. On the program, Dr. Axe discusses everything from breast implant illness to red light therapy.
Dr. Axe starts with an explanation of the difference between functional and conventional medicine using an example of a patient with high blood pressure. While conventional medicine would prescribe a statin to lower blood pressure, functional medicine would look to address the root cause of the elevated blood pressure through diet, supplement, and lifestyle modifications.
When asked about breast implant illness, Dr. Axe begins by explaining what implants actually are:
“Let's start off with what you're putting in your body. You're putting in silicone, which is sort of a mixture between rubber-meets-plastic. It’s fossil fuels or certain chemicals there that make up an implant.”
He goes on to describe how chemicals from the implant leech into women’s bodies:
“If there's a rupture, I mean, there's a tremendous — it's like a flood of chemicals being released in your system, and there was a recent study that came out ... showing that [having breast implants] increases your risk of autoimmune disease by six to eight times.”
Dr. Axe says this could result in rashes, joint pain, hormonal changes, hair thinning, and more. According to him, when women have had their implants removed, about 75% of the time, all of their symptoms resolve within one year of the removal.
Dr. Axe also highlights how much stress can impact fertility and health overall:
“One thing a lot of people I don't think realize is that different emotions affect different organ systems. So we know for instance, high blood pressure is really tied more to anxiousness, and so if you get anxious, your blood pressure will start to rise ... that affects the adrenals. Your body starts producing more cortisol and stress hormones.”
“I had a patient once who ... got a divorce and just was grieving about it for years, and then and then she developed autoimmune disease.”
In the full episode linked below, Dr. Axe also discusses how to heal hypothyroidism, detoxing from birth control, and gives general diet and supplement advice for natural healing. Notably, he also emphasizes the necessity of faith in the healing process:
“I'm not trying to be the healer ... God's the healer. I'm not trying to be that person for you, versus, there's a lot of doctors with a God complex out there. It’s pretty prevalent.”
To enjoy more of Allie’s upbeat and in-depth coverage of culture, news, and theology from a Christian, conservative perspective, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.
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