When Fertility Treatments Don’t Treat Infertility

Authors: John Stonestreet and Dr. Timothy Padgett

Last week, a disturbing story broke about the fate of a child acquired through surrogacy. Logan Riley and Brandon Mitchell, “married” men from Pennsylvania, had chronicled their quest for a baby on social media, and that’s how the world learned that Mitchell is a registered child sex-offender due to highly indecent behavior a decade ago. Though forbidden from unsupervised contact with a minor, he was able to buy a baby. 

As Katy Faust of Them Before Us often reminds us, nothing these men did to acquire this baby was illegal. In fact, it’s an extra-legal situation. Unlike the host of regulations and investigations that govern adoption, no such rules apply when it comes to surrogacy. As Faust posted about this incident,  

This horrifying case of a pedophile acquiring a surrogate boy is opening a lot of eyes. This isn’t adoption. And that’s by design ... no part of this process considers the best interest of the child. It is a market-based delivery system for any and every adult to acquire children. 

She later added, “This kind of failing isn’t a bug of the system; it’s a feature.” 

In fact, there are two interrelated systems at work to produce these horrific results. There is the legal system which, as Faust noted in her post, is allergic to any regulation or legal barrier to artificial reproductive technologies, especially those that provide same-sex couples with children. There’s also the artificial reproductive technologies themselves, which are pushing further into uncharted territory day by day. 

For example, L.S. Dugdale recently wrote about eight babies who were made in a lab. Tragically, that kind of thing is not new. Why these particular babies made headlines is that each one carries DNA from three parents, one man and two women.  

As it turns out, the genetic contributions from each adult are not even close to equal. And, as Dugdale put it, “The aim [of this procedure] has not been to create hybrid creatures but to prevent horrific disease linked to mitochondria, the microscopic power generators in the mother’s egg.” That’s noble, until we remember that the aim of IVF and surrogacy was to help infertile couples have children. Now, these ethically fraught practices are being used to help perfectly healthy adults who are not infertile but are naturally sterile, acquire children. Is there any doubt this procedure, known as mitochondrial donation, won’t be used to give polyamorous couples the kind of kids they want, too? 

In another recent piece in The Free Press, Madeleine Kearns described her journey through her own “unexplained infertility.” Multiple doctors recommended IVF as her best and only option, but Kearns instead chose Natural Procreative Technology, a science aimed at treating underlying conditions that affect fertility. As Kearns put it,  

Revolutionary though it has been, IVF does not restore a would-be mother’s body to optimal health; in fact, IVF is often a profoundly uncomfortable experience for women, not to mention an expensive one. It’s no wonder that many women with “unexplained infertility” are left feeling that mainstream medicine has failed them, subjecting them to stressful, painful interventions, while leaving them in the dark about the mysteries of their own bodies. 

In other words, what drives most of our artificial reproductive technologies is not the desire to restore health. Rather, these technologies intend to provide adults with what they want, by any means necessary. As medical ethicist C. Ben Mitchell wrote, when “medicine becomes just another consumer good ... customers tell the providers what they want, and the providers either respond accordingly or are left behind in the market.”  

The reproductive marketplace is built on twin illusions of consumerism and control. In this world, the almighty “I” should have whatever he or she wants. Those who want sex without children should not be “punished” with a kid. Those who want a child without the trouble of giving birth can rent a incubator for their little accessories. Those who’ve chosen an inherently sterile union can insist, not only that they should be able to have kids, but that others should pay for it. Any future technologies will be utilized accordingly. 

A worldview that insists on absolute autonomy and that “the customer is always right” will corrupt medicine. Christians must offer a better way. In fact, opportunities are ripe for the Bride of Christ to promote healing, become agents of restoration, and advance human dignity ... not just by opposing abortion but by ensuring babies aren’t reduced to products to be bought and sold.