It would be hard to come up with a more horrifying and heartbreaking headline than this: “I Caught Our Surrogate Drinking and Made Her Abort the Baby.” The article details Marty and Melinda Rangers’s experience with surrogacy, focusing primarily on the couple’s first commissioned pregnancy. That pregnancy ended in a twenty-week abortion after an Instagram post showed the surrogate mother they had contracted drinking what appeared to be a tequila shot. The surrogate insisted that she had been drinking water in the video, but the couple, unconvinced, demanded that she abort. In their minds, the surrogate violated one of the stipulations of her forty-page surrogacy contract.
There are many things that money cannot buy, but increasingly, the fertility industry is making it clear that a family just might be something you can. After spending $100,000 on their first child, killed by an abortion, conceived via surrogate, the Rangerses—who had made a small fortune in real estate before retiring to the Caribbean in their early forties—commissioned a second and third child for a total of $300,000. Given the price they paid, it is hardly surprising that the couple would want to ensure they receive products of the highest quality. The story of their first surrogate child’s short life is one of injustice and commodification that reveals the fertility industry’s profound ableism.
Injustice and Commodification
The Rangerses’ story reveals a tragic series of injustices toward the child involved. At each turn, the adults subordinated the child’s interests to their own desires, allowing the child to suffer the eventually deadly consequences. First, they decided on a process that forces an infant into the trauma of maternal separation. Second, a woman (the surrogate) agreed to a contract exchanging the child she had carried in her womb for nine months for money. Third, according to the couple’s allegations, the surrogate engaged in actions that are known to cause harm to a preborn baby. And finally, the commissioning couple decided that the baby ought to be destroyed rather than possibly being born with disabilities.
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Similarly, even if the surrogate the Rangerses contracted did not consume alcohol and expose the child to its attendant risks, the fact that she willingly entered into a lucrative agreement that treats that child as a commodity would still be an injustice. Even if the Rangerses had chosen not to demand an abortion, instead accepting the possibility of raising a child with special needs, they still intentionally chose to rent a woman’s womb, at significant risk to her and the baby. Meanwhile, the child involved was exchanged under the contract as if he or she were property.
Two Sides of the Same Ableist Coin
Abortion clauses are commonplace in surrogacy contracts and this is not the first time a couple demanded a surrogate abort a baby who could have special needs, nor is it the first time such a story has garnered public attention. Last year, two men commissioned a child via surrogacy before insisting on an abortion because the woman they hired as a surrogate had been diagnosed with cancer. Her treatment would have required a premature delivery for the sake of both mother and child—a possibility that was unacceptable to the men who commissioned the child because they were unwilling to raise a child whose prematurity might have resulted in special needs. The baby was aborted at thirty-four weeks.
While the fertility and abortion industries are often conceptualized as opposites—one in the business of creating life and the other in the business of destroying it—the two are not as different as we would like to believe. The destruction of “unfit” children, whether at the embryonic stage or some point during pregnancy, is central to the operation of both industries. Just as the abortion industry would have sentenced my sister to death for the disabilities her birth mother’s addiction caused, the fertility industry creates arrangements where a commissioning couple can “discard” a “damaged product” because the child’s birth mother (surrogate) may have consumed alcohol.
Under this logic, children exist for adults, according to adults’ timing, and on adults’ terms. Because the desires of adults are prioritized, children are treated as a means to an end—a step that always leads in the direction of ableism. If a child exists in order to bring adults fulfillment, happiness, or a sense of completion, then an adverse diagnosis that makes the child appear “subpar” may result in his or her destruction.
If a child exists in order to bring adults fulfillment, happiness, or a sense of completion, then an adverse diagnosis that makes the child appear “subpar” may result in his or her destruction.
Immeasurable Value
The Rangerses paid for the death of their commissioned child because of the possibility of disability—the possibility that the child they had paid for might have additional needs to be met, might not reach developmental milestones at the same time as their peers, and might face physical and cognitive challenges. Especially as the sibling of someone who lives with the same special needs that child might have faced, my heart breaks for that child and cries out against this evil.
At the same time, my heart breaks for that couple. How can someone treat children as products without, at the same time, believing their own value is merely transactional? How can someone express such a lethal rejection of a child with disabilities without also believing their own worth is rooted in their abilities, their possessions, and their accomplishments?
Growing up as a “well sibling” (a sibling of someone with special needs), I have heard more ableist remarks covertly or overtly directed at my family than I care to count. Over the years I’ve seen that this dreadfully utilitarian view of someone else’s value also reflects one’s own concept of self-worth. Those who see someone who spends their days in either a bed or a wheelchair and ask, “What kind of life is that?” are often the same people who react in absolute, unabated terror when faced with a diagnosis or injury that may limit their abilities or place them in a position of dependence, or even the natural process of aging.
No child exists for the sake of adult desires. No child—no person—can be reduced to a mere means to others’ ends. If they were, their value would hinge on how well they fulfill those ends. The child that the Rangerses aborted, the two other children they commissioned, and every person born or preborn has profound value that transcends the purposes of the people responsible for their conception. We are not in a position to further arbitrate whether someone is good enough to be permitted to live.
Unavoidable Vulnerability
After the Rangerses insisted on one abortion to avoid the possibility of parenting a child with special needs, the next child they commissioned was born prematurely at six months. Nowhere does the Daily Mail article so much as suggest that they considered rejecting this child for having special needs, despite having aborted her older sibling at just a few weeks earlier development. If only her older sibling had received the same welcome.
Even after going to great lengths—choosing surrogacy instead of the risk of Mrs. Rangers giving birth, demanding abortion after unconfirmed alcohol consumption, and carefully vetting their next surrogate—the Rangerses still had no guarantee of forming a family without complications. There is an unavoidable vulnerability in parenthood because finite humans are not in control of their children’s lives. With or without a premature birth, the Rangerses had no guarantee that their children would not experience debilitating illness or injury, face mental health challenges, struggle in school, or experience loss. Try as they might, no parent has the power to fully prevent any sort of harm from befalling their children or to insulate themselves from needing to care for a child’s unique and difficult needs.
Parenthood—and life in general—involves surrender. Surrender to the possibility that you may not be able to protect your child from everything. Surrender to the reality that you are now responsible for the needs of another, and you do not know how extensive those needs may be. This is something I witnessed at a young age as I watched my parents raise a child with special needs and welcome children with disabilities into our family through foster care, some of whose lives were tragically short. When my parents began fostering my now sister, they met a girl whose abilities and needs were radically different from what they had been told before meeting her. Yet I have seen them accept those challenges for the past twenty years.
Even before parenthood begins, it involves surrendering to the possibility that it may not happen in our preferred timeframe or in the manner we expect and hope. It may not happen at all. No one is guaranteed risk-free parenting; no one is insulated from suffering.
Children are not a means to the end of adult happiness or fulfilled longings. They are human beings who deserve to be treated with dignity. Refusal to accept that we are not ultimately in control means asserting our control over others. The utilitarianism of the abortion and surrogacy industries allows people to take this to newer, more destructive lengths in a manner that our culture increasingly accepts and embraces. Our response must be to stand up for the most vulnerable and to see and celebrate the immeasurable value of every person at every stage.
Image by Gary and licensed via Adobe Stock.