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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   25577 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 7, 2026

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One more for the road

I was surprised to find, after last month's extensive discussion initiated by a post by @ChickenOverlord of a Canadian surrogacy/abortion case, that no one had posted a substantially similar, though differing in key details, US version that has recently generated an application to the Supreme Court for a stay. The case is different enough that it seems like it might serve as a stress test for some of the claims and ethical intuitions made in the previous discussion.

To summarize the overlapping portion: in both cases the surrogate refused the "commissioning" party's request for abortion following detection of fetal abnormalities, gave birth, and was then involved in extensive litigation. The previous case had a significant same-sex surrogacy culture war nexus. This case features US federalism and jurisdictional questions, as well as the more significant but partially treatable hypoplastic left heart syndrome.

The very compressed summary is that McKenna West of Alaska was asked to abort, per their contract, by Omar Ahmed and Nausheen Gilkar of California. She subsequently fled to Texas, with ongoing litigation as to the ultimate parental rights and appropriate forum. The child is referred to as Gabriel and Rumi by the respective parties. Which probably leads into the stronger, though possibly less legalistic, metaphysical question in this case about what constitutes abdication of parental rights.

In some respects, the current case reverses the question of limiting principle. In this case, the pre-existing contract specifically called for the right of the commissioners to opt for abortion due to fetal abnormalities, and the abnormalities are arguably more incurable. There is some question as to whether that makes the arrangement more binding. It's not clear to me where you should draw the intuitive line at which the contract is entered into with so much foreknowledge, with so much consent, and with abnormalities so severe that we should feel compelled to enforce such a clause. In the previous case it was observed:

The other problem is the terms of the contract. — @gafpromise

That it's unclear whether the problem can really be resolved with sufficiently strong contractual terms. I'm slightly more inclined to accept the premise that surrogacy in general opens up a Pandora's box of ethical problems. Perhaps atomizing the individual biological connections of procreation has produced a system that makes ordinary moral intuition untenable. It was argued in the previous thread that either a full retvrn to nature, or extreme proceduralization and medicalization, might be more stable equilibria.

That it's unclear whether the problem can really be resolved with sufficiently strong contractual terms. I'm slightly more inclined to accept the premise that surrogacy in general opens up a Pandora's box of ethical problems.

I considered making this as a top post, but I can use it here as another example from Pandora's box of surrogacy problems. Apparently there is a Chinese billionaire and video game executive named Xu Bo, who has over 100 children through US based surrogacy programs.

I guess my imaginary example of weird millionaire cult leader filling his ranch with hundreds of children from surrogacy - that I used before in these hypotheticals - was not imaginative enough. Now there is also the foreign aspect twist due to intersection of jus soli citizenship laws, where foreign billionaires and possibly state actors can breed US citizens Soldiers abroad and make cults in safe jurisdiction. The reality has always some ways to surprise.

Yet another "unintended" consequence of completely surrendering the culture and law over to Queer Studies weirdos, who specifically pushed for surrogacy as a "family equality" tool for access to motherhood by queer people degenerates. And now after these ideas were imposed by activists on the ground, we can all adopt surprised Pikachu face, that the society has to rummage through debris of yet another norm "abolished" by these lunatics specifically engaged in crusade against "heteronormativity", so we now live in their world of country-wide mental asylum constructed for the most abominable degenerates of all kinds, not only the queer ones.

Yes, I posted this case because it seemed to have quite a few culture war points, but there are for sure more generalized pitfalls.

I had some vague notion of that case you posted, but didn't recall the details. I guess Teslas are not the only thing the Chinese can copy and scale up production of heroically. That particular style of failure(?) mode is not unique, though. You have the Jonathan Jacob Meijer 550–600 children case and the Jan Karbaat swaperoo cases in a similar mode. It's not uniquely enabled by technology, though; supposedly, the Ed Houben 100+ case involves a significant "natural insemination" component.

Sperm donors create their own unique problems in terms of potential incest or spreading of rare diseases and whatnot. However this Chinese case is different - he literally has 100+ children inside his compound with hired staff etc. You can see it in the photo. I have never seen anything like that, however it was the first thing that was obvious to me as soon as I learned about how the surrogacy works.

The photo is one of the most disturbing things I've seen in a while. It makes Elon look downright K-selecting.

Unfortunately outgroup homogeneity bias means I have no idea if those kids actually look like half-siblings, or if they just look Chinese.

Well also it's a very unclear photo and all the children are wearing masks.

The feminist case for abortion -- bodily autonomy -- does not apply here, because the surrogate does not want the abortion.

The law generally give people who provided genetic material for a fetus few if any rights over its fate. Generally, you can't even opt out of legal parenthood if you disagree with someone using your DNA to make a baby.

One argument might be if the deviation from normal development was large enough that the biological parents could argue that it would be in the child's best interests not to be born. Basically treating it as a MAID case with the biological parent taking the role of a legal guardian. But my understanding is that MAID for people who can't consent is a moral minefield and few if any countries have legalized it.

Also, the disability would have to be pretty severe before one could argue with a straight face that it is not in the interest of the unborn to live. This is obviously a much higher bar to clear than abortion for medical reasons under my-body-my-choice. Trisomy 21 or being wheelchair-bound or blind would all not suffice. Anencephaly would.

Contract law certainly has its limits where medical autonomy is concerned. For example, if two parties form a contract where each is supposed to donate a kidney to a loved one of the other, and after the first donation the other party does not want to go through with it, I can't imagine any judge would order the unwilling donor to have their kidney removed by force.

What might work are financial penalty clauses. "If you do not reciprocate the kidney donation, you will owe me a million dollars" might work very well if the supposed donor has a net worth of half a million and a family to feed. Surrogates for hire are typically not in rich enough to be hurt badly by loss of their wealth, though. Nor is a judge likely to confirm an arbitrary penalty in a contract beyond full loss of her compensation.

One interesting strategy would be for the biological parent to say: "if you do not abort, then I will sue you for custody and the increased costs of raising a disabled child". I am not sure how a custody battle would turn out, here. There is an argument to be made that if the couple decided to abort the fetus, they have effectively relinquished their interest in it.

I'm slightly more inclined to accept the premise that surrogacy in general opens up a Pandora's box of ethical problems.

This may be true, but I do not think it is an argument against surrogacy.

Consider employment. It also raises a ton of ethical and legal issues. Collective bargaining, maternity leave, sexual harassment, social security, worker safety, child labor, and so forth. Societies generally don't react by saying "employment opens a big can of worms, let's simply outlaw it". Instead, it is regulated in great detail. This is often a headache, but overall it works.

This is "deal with the devil" territory. Literally selling your unborn child and signing away your bodily autonomy. Let's hope she at least got the ability to spin straw into gold out of it.

Is anyone outside the court system seriously defending the bio parents here? Like (the conviction of) Lindsay Clancy 2.0, the virginia mom found guilty of abuse for letting her 5-year-old walk 1/2 mile unsupervised in a gated community.

Another win for jury trials, it would be nearly impossible to select even a majority of ordinary people who’d convict either.

+1 for the parents, cautiously. I'm receptive to arguments about bodily autonomy/finding an economic system where poor people are incentivised to be walking incubators to be distasteful, but at the same time so far there is no legal clarity against it and I don't think there should be takesies-backsies when society couldn't get itself to ban something but then didn't like the outcome.

Also, taking for granted that weakening surrogacy contracts like this is halfway to banning it, it's not like surrogacy doesn't have its good sides, from a eugenic perspective as much as for the personal good of the would-be genetic parents.

Me. It's not her child and she had signed a contract.

I'm glad you responded. But

It's not her child and she had signed a contract

The bio parents don't want the child. Even ignoring that a child isn't property and did not sign (at this point they're born, and even before then, I see abortion as a lesser evil); if somebody doesn't want something for themselves, why should they be allowed to deny others?

Should the surrogate be able to turn around and sue for child support? She should be able to force a DNA of the donors to prove their maternity/paternity.

Edit: If so, what does this mean for father's rights regarding child support when they wish to legally surrender their paternity prior to birth?

No. I don’t see why there would be child support since they have both adoptive parents, and the state should pay for medical care, but if it’s needed, I like the suggestion that the agency is responsible.

EDIT: actually, since (unless) the surrogate has a partner who signs with the agency, I think they should be obligated to pay.

It looks to me like the parents didnt want the huge medical bill and what they believed would be the death of the infant. Now that the surrogate got the state of Texas to pay for it, they obviously do want the child that they initially engaged the surrogate for. But I tend to agree that the surrogate, being the one to get Texas to pay for saving the child, now has the stronger claim.

The fetus is absolutely their property. Should IVF clinics be allowed to use your frozen eggs without your consent if you don't need them?

If they can find decent adoptive parents, I don't see why not.

By that logic, why not go full Murray Rothbard, and declare children to be the parents' property?

I'm on board. IMO it's simpler, more straightforward and practical and philosophically consistent than any of the competing theories.

Because some of us think that fetuses are qualitatively different from children. Children meet my definition of sentient human beings, but fetuses don't.

This is obviously not science though I guess without clear science picking 9 months post conception as sentient sort of works. But there is no science that makes outside of mother as suddenly sentient being. Somewhat similar to how we have different ages for adulthood but they’re basically made up.

The religious people have the better science argument of just declaring we don’t know when it’s sentient so let’s do none of this.

I don't actually think 9 months post conception is particularly human (the "human" part of "sentient human" is doing more work for me) either; it's just a convenient cutoff point since before it it for sure isn't and afterwards the cutoff is different for every instance.

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You don't meet the definition either when you're unconcious.

Since you apparently presume to know my definition, can you state it in your own words?

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I believe that the answer given to that problem in past discussions on this website⁎ is: a previously-conscious child has a future expectation of consciousness (barring an unrecoverable coma), while a never-previously-conscious fetus has no such future expectation.

⁎Which I failed to find in a few minutes of searching, so I unfortunately am forced to write this comment instead of just giving a terse "previous discussion" link.

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You mean full Rome?

Article

tl;dr: A child is a person in possession of the right of self-ownership but not yet competent to exercise that right, so it is placed under the pseudo-ownership/trusteeship of its parents. (The parents are not allowed to harm the child through action, but are allowed to let it come to harm through inaction, and are allowed to sell the trusteeship to others.) The child can assert its right of self-ownership and end the trusteeship once it is competent to do so (e. g., by leaving the parents' household).

Sure, also.

"My body my choice" should apply here, right? It seems rather extreme if the law can force surrogate mothers into abortions. Though I guess dilemmas like this is why surrogacy is illegal many places in the world.

That's a slogan, not a legal principle.

Bodily autonomy is generally considered quite important and not something that can be signed away.

If you're a woman, sure.

If you're a man and war were declared, very different story.

Or if you lived through the pandemic years.

Different situations entirely. A contract with a private couple is not a contract with the government. And medical procedures forced upon conscripts are generally limited to vaccines.

Is Bodily Autonomy only limited to “dont force surgeries on people”? There are a lot of people who would consider things like rape or banning birth control a violation. That’s not even getting into things like lethal injection.

rape

Illegal

banning birth control

not a thing in the west.

lethal injection

Punishment for severe crimes. Not something you can just sign your way into.

not a contract with the government

And when the draft officers show up to collect you I'm sure your insistence on seeing this contract will keep you un-drafted.

Different situations entirely.

Violence is work performed by the unique properties of the male sex; surrogacy is the same thing for women. They're both sex work- as in, they both exercise the inherent value in one's sex (when one has no other value).

And medical procedures forced upon conscripts are generally limited to vaccines.

I'll take the feminists (and clueless social conservatives) at their word and say that a low-speed injection of semen with a 9-month recovery time and risk of permanent downstream injury is about as harmful as a high-speed injection of lead and steel.

Are you trying to be difficult, or do you sincerely not see the analogy?

Are you trying to be difficult, or do you really not see how the analogy obviously fails?

Medical procedures...?

What about being blown to pieces in a war you had no willingness to be part of? Conscripts don't enter into contacts with the governments willingly, yet forced to die for them, they are.

Yeah, I'd think this surrogacy contract would be void as against public policy under both pro-life (you can't contract to murder) and pro-choice (a woman can't contract away her own bodily autonomy) moral frameworks.

I have to hand it to the baby purchasers: it's not every day someone manages to simultaneously step on two rakes facing in opposite directions.

Obviously, a black woman claiming asylum in Texas from a gay muslim couple demanding an unwanted abortion is a culture war issue.

Now, if this woman were truly consistently pro-life from the outset, she wouldn't have been a surrogate. But fair enough, some people see the reality and have a moral awakening. Generally speaking if they won't take the child it's unclear why they care; it's unlikely she's going to get child support from them anyways. But they have the kid, don't they?

a black woman

She certainly doesn’t look it in the article's photo.

Are you looking at the right person? The white woman at the left of frame (front of the group) is a lawyer or something. She is the (light-skinned, to be fair) black woman near the center.

Ah, you're absolutely right. BBC's paywall gave me all of 5 seconds to glance at the image and caption, so yep, I got it wrong.

Apologies for the paywalled reference, I don't know why I don't get a paywall. Archive for the people who couldn't access.

If you're in the UK (or maybe even just a Commonwealth?), that'd explain it. It's a fairly recent decision by the Beeb.

I think it must be something in my browser settings, maybe because I have JavaScript off on the site, but now it's not loading images. Seems like they might be actively messing with it.

Wait, why wouldn’t she have been a surrogate at all?

Presumably she never would have accepted a contract clause about abortion, but I figure you can come to pro-life beliefs without holding a specific marriage-only doctrine.

Yeah. My guess is that she's broadly pro-choice in terms of prioritizing adult women's bodily autonomy, then after getting pregnant the hormones caused her to become emotionally attached to the fetus and so didn't want to abort. She probably doesn't believe that fetuses have an inherent right to life in general, just this one is hers and so she wants to choose to let it live.

She probably doesn't believe that fetuses have an inherent right to life in general, just this one is hers and so she wants to choose to let it live.

No more irrational than the couple who hired her as a surrogate, after the results of the scan told her "kill it before it grows", but are now:

In a previous court hearing, Gilkar said the baby - whom they named Rumi - was "our child" and "the love of our lives", according to the Associated Press.

"The love of our lives" whom we wanted dead before it got expensive to treat the medical problems sits uneasily with me, but I'm not pro-abortion in the first place.

She did accept a contract clause about abortion.

I thought you were saying no pro-lifer would be a surrogate at all, even without such a clause.

Aren't almost all surrogacy contracts written with that clause, at least commercial contracts?

No idea.

I could imagine some number of non-commercial surrogates who are volunteering for an infertile/gay/etc. friend. No, I have no idea how often that occurs, but it came up in the last discussion of this topic.

Seems to me like the contract was insufficiently specified. If the couple wants to abort but the surrogate refuses, then there is a solution that the surrogate takes on full financial responsibility for the child and the couple forfeits their claim of parenthood. Good for the state of Texas for putting its money where its mouth is on preventing abortion.

State interests is far too strong to allow this. There is zero reason I am unrelated third party should have to pay for the kid. Which would generally happen because the person carrying the child is generally poor and renting out their body for 9 months.

the surrogate takes on full financial responsibility for the child

Long ago I read about a case of DIY sperm donation from a guy who knew two lesbians for them to have children, with a contract stating the man held no financial responsibility. Later he gets hit with child support. The laws regarding child support cannot be negated by a private contract. This guy practically wrote down "laws don't apply to me" and signed it with a couple lesbians.

Users on Reddit generally agree that informal home donations carry severe legal risks because private contracts often fail to override state welfare recovery laws without medical oversight.

Uh, thanks Google search AI. I was hoping for the opinions of Reddit regarding this. Other more relevant search results showed state governments going after some hapless guy for child support.

Anyways, this could work but we'd need a legal framework allowing it.

William Marotta is the case you're thinking of, and apparently on appeal the court ruled in his favor.

I have my doubts about whether most states would enforce a contract with regard to parental rights, which usually involve another court, or even with regard to child support. And this case explicitly involves traveling to another jurisdiction for the protection of its laws, which further complicates things.

I'd rather have the responsibility fall to the agency than the surrogate, but that's just details.

In normal cases, the law recognizes the rights of a pregnant woman over both her own body and the fetus. Whoever provided the gametes gets basically nothing. A narrow exception feels wrong, and that should either be changed in general or not at all.

It seems like a perverse outcome that strangers with a contract could have more rights to a woman's body than her husband. I wonder if people would feel more or less accepting of a husband who included such contractual terms in a prenup? Or is that actually common and I have no idea?

Don't prenups get thrown out the second they're called into question anyways?

Depends on who/whom. Taylor Swift had a fairly strict prenup and I doubt it will get thrown out of any court

Depends greatly on the state and on what the prenup covers. Various state divorce laws, marital property laws, etc. generally trump anything you put in a prenup, but anything outside of what those laws cover is generally fair game to include (and enforce) in a prenup.

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