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Notes -
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:
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.
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 citizensSoldiers 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 peopledegenerates. 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.
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