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| No | 56% | 89 votes | Total: 158 votes | |
| Yes | 44% | 69 votes |
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Add to FavoritesNO: Most people are aware of the controversial practice by many companies of outsourcing manufacturing, electronics and computer information services to India. Now there's a growing business there of providing newborns for the US adoption market. Young girls and women from poor areas are hired to be impregnated, bear their babies and sell them for adoption for waiting American and European couples who can't have babies of their own.
In the American and European countries, where a couple may hire a surrogate to provide a child for $25,000 and up, the discounted designer babies from India cost an average of $4,500, including all medical expenses and the guarantee of a healthy baby. Additionally, the baby mill in India provides hospital-quality medical care for the hired mothers-to-be and the newborns.
Such birth arrangements and adoptions are legal in India. There is much incentive for young Indian women to volunteer to become surrogate mothers, because they can make more money in one paid pregnancy for adoption than they could earn in five years of working in low pay jobs their hometowns. So far, not all the volunteers are young, unmarried girls. Some are married and have already borne two or three children.
Of course, many Americans will insist there are already many babies and children in the US who need homes just as badly. This is true, but most couples who adopt overseas believe the legal processes in the US are too expensive and drawn out. They don't want to wait months and years for the bureaucracy to process them, nor do they want to spend their life savings to get an American child. Additionially, they prefer the service in India that provides healthy newborns, rather than take chances on older adoptees.
Is this kind of baby-making outsourcing beneficial for the young surrugate mothers in India, as well as a positive boon for the adopting American couples? Or is it what amounts to running a commercial baby factory, and is wrong by religious, moral and/or humanitarian standards?
My personal opinion on the baby farms is that it could lead the way to a frightening dehumanization in future of society, the wholesale manufacturing of babies. Have we reached the time when breeding of humans will become as callous and unfeeling as the breeding of farm animals?
Learn more about this author, Ted Sherman.
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Yes
Do not judge a surrogate mother by her Third World status. Poverty is an understandable motivation, on a personal level, but no one has a right to judge others!
Jesus said "Judge not!"
The PRINCE OF PEACE also said "Love others as much as you love yourself". have you pondered that responsibility?
Love ALL the babies, in all the wombs; including surrogate babies and the fatherless children of the world.
Can we also try to love EVEN the innocent "miracle of life" living inside the womb of an unlucky victim of date rape; instead of wishing for the innocent one to be subjected to the cruelty of a death sentence?
Love the surrogate mothers in Third World and love the in fertile US couples too.
When money comes into it, people get self-righteous. They should not. We need to look in the mirror, and take the speck out of our OWN eye!
Bearing children is a scary thing, but women bravely maintain the survival of the human race all over the world!
It is arguable that wives are often the surrogate mothers for us men, who could not have a baby for love or money.
Our "proud" male gender would die out in just one generation, if left to our own devices!
Imagine the blessing of eternal heaven, for such dear little ones as surrogate babies; that some hard hearted "pro choice" abortion advocates want to rob of their CHOICE to enjoy.
Or shall we call it the unborn citizen's "inalienable right to pursue happiness", as the US constitution words it?!?
Those who argue for a woman's right to her own body, I urge you to defend the surrogate mother's right to use her God-given ability to create life the way she freely chooses!
Try to imagine the joy of that surrogate child's own remarkable discovery that they are very much loved, by a "pregnancy-handicapp ed" couple of dear parents.
Also please try to imagine the pure joy, of a precious surrogate child's discovery that they are totally LOVED by an unseen Father/Mother GOD who is the author of all life.
Precious child, I say, because a mind is beyond any known price on earth. The precious life, that we have the unmitigated pride to dare to judge and debate, is absolutely priceless!
God is preparing a place for them in heaven. How great is that?!?
Try to imagine the joy of the surrogate mother who might have lost her "love of her life" husband & children in a car accident, but loves life, and finds joy in giving birth.
Try to imagine the joy of the surrogate born person's infertile US parents, who prayed to God for a child, and now have one!
Try to imagine the joy of the surrogate child's future soul mate, who had cried out to God for a good help-mate.
Try to imagine the joy of the surrogate child's own children, friends, and community, who enjoy the "rippled effect" of a single treasured human life.
This could be another Dr Livingston, Freud, Albert Einstein, Ralph Nader, Michelangelo, or a Dr Martin Luther King.
This could be another Florence Nightingale, Jane Austin, Mother Theresa or a mother like your own.
I guess I am leaning on my pro life bent, but I live in Canada where there is no death penalty for even the most barbaric crimes. Only an innocent baby can be put to death, for the near crime of being unwanted by the one with power to kill it...a "natural" mother with too much selfish love.
Compare the unimpassioned "natural" mother who sentences her own flesh and blood to death for the minor offense of not being "convenient", on one hand...to the consenting adult surrogate mothers in Third World who chose to be "used by God" to give a child life.
If she does it for the joy of giving life to the next generation, how can you find fault with her, just because she was paid for her time and trouble?
If she does it for money, to support her poor family of natural children, God bless her for this free choice sacrifice.
Even if a mother tragically dies in child bearing, as happens even with "natural mothers"; at least life on earth has been perpetuated.
"Death, where is thy sting?"
The "sting of death" cannot take away the birth mother's God-given eternal (never-dying) soul, which lives on in a better place i paradise.
Maybe she, herself, would say that high price of death, was NOT too much to pay for a priceless living soul to be born into the "miracle" of life.
Who are we to judge impoverished surrogate mothers in Third World?
Who are we to judge the living God, who is our judge?!? We are not His judge! He is ours.
The Word of God, holy scriptures, say "it is appointed", for everyone, to DIE (once); so avoiding the risk of death in giving birth does not give a woman a "pass death" card! We are literally all dying to get off this sin-cursed planet.
Our creator God offers us eternal life, with Him, in His home on high, where there will be no more tears. Sounds like a pension plan we can all LOVE with.
Learn more about this author, Michael Pilecki.
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