Third-party reproductive efforts are increasingly normalizing a build-a-baby culture that encourages people to commission designer babies in much the same way they would commission designer handbags.

By Kaeley Triller Haver

FEBRUARY 18, 2020

I sat in stunned silence last year at a Washington state Senate hearing about commercial surrogacy. The bill contained 55 pages of text, full of demands and bloviations about alleged parental rights. Its goal was to limitlessly legalize commercial surrogacy through the state.

I listened as concerned citizens pointed out the many dangerous loopholes in the bill and requested amendments that would safeguard the women and children involved from potential abuse, but every request was categorically shot down as unnecessary. There were no limits whatsoever to prevent abuse:

• No required background checks for prospective parents (convicted pedophiles could commission children).
• No limit to the number of children any given person could order. (One millionaire from Japan has fathered at least 13 children via surrogacy. His expressed goal is to father at least 1,000 over time.)
• No limit to the amount of compensation any given surrogate could receive. (Hello, money-hungry human traffickers.)
• No requirements for surrogates to be Washington state residents. (Again, traffickers?)
• No language preventing mentally disabled women from being exploited for commercial gain
  .

In all 55 pages of text, there was but one solitary reference to the needs of the child. The rest was emotionally manipulative language revealing a deep-seated sense of entitlement and a devil-may-care attitude toward the myriad ethical implications for the people most greatly affected by surrogacy: the women and children.

This week, New York is slated to consider a similar bill to legalize commercial surrogacy throughout the state. Aggressively peddled through heartstrings rhetoric and celebrity endorsement, the bill is positioned as progressive and loving. Both the evangelical and secular worlds eat it up with a silver spoon. After all, children are blessings, right? Who doesn’t love babies?

Make no mistake, commercial surrogacy is anything but loving. It is the exploitation and commodification of women’s bodies and the legalized buying and selling of humans.

Women Are More Than Their Wombs

The European Parliament in Brussels has concluded that “surrogacy undermines the human dignity of the woman since her body and its reproductive functions are used as a commodity,” and its resolution goes so far as to call surrogacy “an act of violence against women.” Even impoverished nations such as India have recently banned commercial surrogacy — a $3.3 billion annual revenue source — outright. If a poor country is willing to sacrifice $3.3 billion a year to protect women from the exploitation of commercial surrogacy, what’s our excuse?

One of the things that appeals to me most about first-wave feminism is the dogged commitment to empowering women to be seen and treated as more than sex objects or breeders. Now, in the name of compassion, we are going 180 degrees in the opposite direction. In the last month alone, I’ve seen countless headlines referring to surrogate mothers as “gestational carriers,” “a greenhouse for my seed,” and “incubators.” One gay man wrote, “What do I need women for — until I want to have kids?”

Commercial surrogacy is dehumanizing enough in theory and even more so in practice. Has anyone else noticed that the only people hiring surrogates are the wealthy or that the women they’re hiring are usually poor and desperate for money? As Jennifer Lahl, president of the Center for Bioethics and Culture, poignantly asked, “As Kim Kardashian and Kanye West welcome a new baby through surrogacy, I ask you: How many times have you seen a People Magazine cover tabloid where a wealthy celebrity is offering to be a surrogate for her low-income housekeeper?”

Surrogacy Harms Real People

When these bills are considered, why is the general public so rarely invited to consider the voices of the women and children who have been harmed by surrogacy? Why aren’t they invited to hear about women like Brooke Brown or Michelle Reaves, who both died from pregnancy-related complications during surrogate pregnancies?

Why don’t they hear from Kelli Martinez, who nearly died and was left with more than $9,000 in medical debt after being a surrogate? Why don’t they listen to women like Meghan, who nearly lost her ovaries through the egg-donation process? Or from Gina or Tanya or Jessica Allen, whose nightmare stories of surrogacy ought to give the world pause?

While egg donors and surrogates are promised generous compensation, no one ever seems to warn them of the often exorbitant costs of their labors that can sometimes include permanent sterility and even death. Why doesn’t it matter that there are virtually no long-term studies on the health of surrogates and egg donors?

Why isn’t anyone talking about the fact that while the average woman produces one egg per menstrual cycle, egg donors are put into a state of ovarian hyperstimulation so they can produce as many as 30 per cycle? Why don’t we care about the long-term effects of the drugs that allow this?

Why aren’t we talking about the countless groups of donor-conceived adults who are speaking out in defense of the rights stripped from them as children, such as Nick Isel?

Don’t even get me started on the appallingly shallow requirements for egg donors: supermodel looks, high IQs, low BMIs, no history of mental health issues. Third-party reproductive efforts are increasingly normalizing a build-a-baby culture that encourages people to commission designer babies in much the same way they would commission designer handbags, through a catalog of handpicked traits and superficial standards aimed at achieving a superior product. Why does this feel reminiscent of Josef Mengele?

Parenthood Is a Privilege, Not a Right

Some people reading this will feel tremendous rage at the things I’m saying — people who are amazing parents and grandparents of children conceived through surrogacy, people whose painful experiences with infertility have led them to consider surrogacy, good people whose lives have been transformed by the unspeakable joy of children they would not otherwise know and love.

I’m sorry for any pain my words cause. Your children, grandchildren, and loved ones are priceless, valuable, and important. This article is not personal, but an assessment of the dangers, pitfalls, and ethical dilemmas inherent in the surrogacy process.

It’s an age-old story that somehow continues to recycle itself. People never seem to learn the well-documented lesson: Personal desires do not justify the exploitation of other humans. In the Genesis account of Abraham and Sarah, we see the pain of infertility leading to the use of Sarah’s handmaid Hagar as a surrogate. We also see the surrogacy narrative play out as painfully as it usually does — the surrogate mother is used, resented, and discarded with zero regard for her wellbeing.

It’s a brutal but important truth: Parenthood is a privilege, not a right. No one is entitled to other peoples’ bodies. Women’s bodies should never be for rent, and babies should never be for sale.

Kaeley Triller Haver studied English at Northwest University and puts her education to use as the communications director of a local nonprofit organization. Of all the titles she’s ever held, Kaeley considers “mom” the most significant.

Source: thefederalist.com

In January 2020, Open Doors, an international NGO advocating on behalf of persecuted Christians,  released their annual World Watch List. The World Watch List provides an assessment of 50 countries where Christians face the most severe types of persecution. At the very top of the list, the countries which show extreme levels of persecution, we see North Korea, Afghanistan, Somalia, Libya, Pakistan, Eritrea, Sudan, Yemen, Iran, India and Syria. 

The World Watch List 2020 does not give much hope for the persecuted communities. Indeed, it presents a grim picture of the situation of Christians globally making it very clear that the persecution encountered by them continues to get worse. The report identifies that, “in 2020, 260 million Christians live in World Watch List top 50 countries where Christians are at risk of high, very high or extreme levels of persecution. This is up from 245 million in 2019.” The report also emphasizes some important, negative changes within global trends of the persecution of Christians. Furthermore, it identified that: “countries which had previously avoided more intense levels of persecution, such as Sri Lanka and Burkina Faso have, in the reporting period, experienced destabilizing violence, highlighting the fragile persecution context in west Africa and south Asia.” 

The report suggests that we should be positive about the future for persecuted Christians globally, as “faith actors across the world are standing firm and strengthening communities against the odds. Church leaders, wider church networks and faith based non-governmental organizations provide a lifeline of care in isolated places, where no other help is forthcoming.” However, the numbers and the narrative gives a very different impression. According to the report, the situation in China continues to worsen as more and more churches in China are experiencing pressure at the hands of the Chinese state. Indeed, in the reporting period, over 5,500 churches have been destroyed, closed down or confiscated. In India, Christian minorities are subjected to extreme persecution which manifested in at least 1,445 physical attacks and death threats against Christians in 2019. In Nigeria, in 2019, approximately 1,350 Christians were killed for their faith. Indeed, these numbers do not give much hope to the persecuted.

One must acknowledge the great contribution of faith leaders across the world, standing up for the persecuted. However, it is important to recognize that their assistance can do only so much if states and international actors do not step up their game and address the issue. It is crucial to realize that more and more states are waking up to these issues, recognizing that it requires a comprehensive response. 

Among others, the UK, the US, Poland and Hungary have been leading the way. However, as the issue is a global phenomenon, it requires a truly global response. The response does not only require a response after the atrocities have occurred and efforts to assist the victims, it also requires a strong response in securing justice. Indeed, impunity will only beget further crime. This is visible in many parts of the world, no least in Nigeria. In Nigeria, Boko Haram and Fulani herdsmen have been perpetrating mass atrocities unabated for several years. In January 2020, a new actor (to the region) has emerged: Daesh fighters. They have been reported to have killed several Christians with a promise to continue to spill more blood without mercy. 

Knowing the situation of Christians globally, it is difficult to hold hope of a better future. States and international actors must come to a conclusion, once and for all, that acts of violence as experienced by Christians (but also other religious groups) globally, will not cease on their own. Actions are required. These actions are required now. 

Source: forbes.com

• Ann Carey
  Feb 14, 2020

  CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE

A memorial stone is seen at the burial site of 2,411 aborted babies, whose remains were interred Feb. 12, 2020, at Southlawn Cemetery in South Bend, Ind. (Credit: CNS photo/Indiana Office of the Attorney General.)

Last December, I received an early Christmas present that I would have rejected just one year earlier: an “M” for “male” on my driver’s license.

The switch back to male marked the end of a long journey of gender confusion and self-deception. Along the way I became a transgender activist and then America’s first legally non-binary person.

By Christmas Eve 2019, I was done with the lies. By God’s grace, a Portland judge granted my petition to legally restore my sex to male.

This has been a five-year ordeal. I first rose to become a transgender activist in 2015, telling The New York Times: “I now live in a world where radical, conservative politicians and religious groups routinely attack my very existence with legislation to deny me basic human rights such as a bathroom that matches my gender-identity.”

In these trying times, we must turn to the greatest document in the history of the world to promise freedom and opportunity to its citizens for guidance. Find out more now >>

New to identifying as a woman at that stage of my life, but indoctrinated by the peddlers of transgender ideology to believe I was one, I incorrectly believed that gaining access to female bathrooms was a human rights issue for me.

I was wrong. In hindsight, it was all part of a selfish quest to nourish my long-held sexual fantasy of being a woman—a mental disorder called autogynephilia.

Although my landmark court case was built on lies, deceit, and pseudoscience, I didn’t care. It didn’t matter to me that the sex change petition fictitiously claimed my sex was non-binary and got two doctors to say so.

It didn’t matter to me that before the brief hearing, which lasted mere minutes, my lawyer had confided that the case was essentially fixed, that the judge had a transgender child and had recently granted a sex change for a 12-year-old.

None of that mattered, because winning meant getting sweet revenge against those who I’d come to believe were harming me and stopping me from engaging in my addiction—the feminists, and conservative Christians.

Fine, I thought to myself back then. If all these parties don’t want me in female bathrooms, then I’ll help destroy the very thing they want to protect: The definition of sex as we’ve known it for over 200 years in America.

When I was finished, sex was no longer grounded to science by things like chromosomes and genitals observed at birth. It was determined by personal feelings rooted in what I would later come to realize were sex stereotypes.

It wasn’t lost on me that if I won the case and had my sex declared as non-binary (neither male nor female), and had that codified into law, then bathrooms would subsequently have to be made gender-neutral.

People who are hurt end up hurting people, so at the time I didn’t care if my actions were detrimental to women and young girls.

In my mind, by winning the case, I was sticking it to those radical feminists who had refused to accept me as one of them. Being legally no longer classified as female meant this vicious group of women could no longer accuse me of appropriating womanhood and being a caricature of a female—even if that was true (and it was).

Likewise, I intended to take revenge on the Christians, another group that had antagonized me since I’d begun donning a wig and dress and acting out sexually in public.

I didn’t know much about the Bible back then, but I knew enough to know they cherished its teaching about how God created only male and female. So I vowed to destroy that sacred belief.

Going ‘Nonbinary’

When I officially “broke” the gender binary, the media circus was spectacular. Media outlets from as far away as Germany cheered me on, celebrating my victory and embracing me as their latest LGBT hero.

Before long, states were debating whether to recognize up to 73 gender identities, and gender activiststestified about how those false-identities rooted in mere feelings were valid and real.

For me, the celebration went on for months as I entertained reporters with tales of how I was the third gender: a special combination of male biology and a female gender identity.

Of course, it was all a complete delusion, but journalists ate it up. Not once did they question me. And above all, I believed it. Having an official “X” marker on my driver’s license served as validation from the government that I was, indeed, nonbinary.

The X marker is supposed to mean “sex unspecified or indeterminate,” but that’s not what I or any of the other people getting the designation believe about ourselves. At birth, my correct sex was easily determinable by the male genitals I have always possessed.

Today, back to my senses and having legally reclaimed my male birth sex, I recognize the damage I’ve done. But my return to sanity and embrace of my male sex have caused the cheering on the left to fall silent.

Even more importantly, though, I’ve taken responsibility for the harm I have caused, for the millions of dollars spent to advance the fraud that I shamefully participated in. In church and public, I confessed my sins, and humbled myself before the Lord, pleading for Him to lift me up.

As a result, the Lord has lifted me, and I’m now getting the help I should have gotten all along.

Setting the Record Straight

In April 2019, the Department of Veterans Affairs reluctantly agreed to diagnose me with a sexual paraphilia, the true cause behind my previous sexual confusion. And in December, despite my past and who I had been, a Christian legal organization agreed to help me change my sex back to male.

On Dec. 12, a Portland attorney submitted a new sex change petition on my behalf to the very court that had once declared my sex as non-binary.

In the documents, we asked for reclamation of the male birth sex that I was correctly observed to be at birth, and for the restoration of the precious name given to me by my parents.

After receiving the news that the petition was successfully filed, I prayed. Others joined me in prayer, asking the Lord for speedy success in our endeavor. And within just a short time our prayers were answered.

In only a week, a more competent judge signed the order, ending the legal fiction behind the fraud that had allowed an X marker on drivers licenses in over a dozen states.

On Dec. 24, a courthouse clerk deposited the signed and notarized court order declaring my sex male and my name James Clifford Shupe into the postal system, with a destination of my new home state of Florida.

President Ronald Reagan taught me as a young soldier to vote with my feet, so I did, leaving Oregon with the intention of sending a clear message that I wouldn’t be party to the mutilation of children that goes on there under the guise of gender therapy.

Moving Forward

I’m often asked what has prompted my turnabout and conversion to Christ.

The answer lies in the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, which also apply to other addictions, such as my compulsive sexual behavior.

I have admitted that I am powerless over my mental illness and transvestic disorder. I have accepted that my life has become unmanageable and that only a power greater than myself can restore me to sanity. And I have made a conscious decision to turn my will and my life over to the care of God as I understand Him.

During my long journey of first identifying as a female and then later non-binary, I’ve walked among the many drug and alcohol-addicted homeless people sleeping on the streets of the West Coast each night. I’ve abused my flesh in Portland sex clubs, BDSM dungeons, and adult theaters. I’ve harmed my body with cross-sex hormones and risky sexual behaviors. And I’ve dishonored my wife and my marriage vows with inexcusable transgressions, of which there are many.

It took seeing and experiencing all of that destruction and recognizing the harms of it for me to finally understand that Christianity builds stronger families, safer communities, and most importantly, a better nation.

Like the Apostle Paul, my past actions of harming Christians, and in my case also harming women and girls by entering their bathroom space, will always humble me before women, the American public, and the Lord.

Similarly, like Paul, I too will carry an irremovable thorn in my flesh. Biblical scholars are unable to agree about the type of thorn Paul carried, but for me, it is a transvestic disorder with autogynephilia—a mental disorder I will battle for the remainder of my days.

Will I stumble and fall, or relapse again as we call it in recovery? Maybe—and to be honest, I already have. Going into my detransition, I set an unrealistic goal of perfection for myself, throwing away all of my women’s clothing and vowing to never cross-dress or act out sexually again.

That proved to be disastrous because as my testosterone quickly returned, I soon relapsed into another bout of stockpiling female garments.

But no relapse like this means that I or any other male with this mental disorder is female.

Some Christians have compared my circumstances to Norma McCorvey, the plaintiff in Roe v. Wade who later became a pro-life advocate.

In my non-binary court case, I lied about not being male. Similarly, McCorvey lied about being sexually assaulted. And in both cases, a loophole in state law was exploited to advance destructive medical practices. In Texas, for McCorvey, it was the right to get an abortion. For me in Oregon, it was the right to change your sex.

Both of our court cases then went on to unleash something monstrous.

Like McCorvey, because of the magnitude of my misdeeds and the amount of damage done, I sought forgiveness in the only place capable of bestowing forgiveness: the loving arms of Jesus.

Should I relapse, the correct response for others would be to promptly get me help. Civilly commit me if necessary, if the relapse has progressed to self-harm. But do not, under any circumstances, indulge my past delusions or new ones.

In Christ, I am a new creation. “The old has gone; the new has come.”

Source: dailysignal.com

Source: kath.net

Franziskus zeigte sich überrascht, als er erfuhr, dass seit der gesetzlichen Freigabe der Abtreibung in den USA im Jahr 1973 mehr als 60 Millionen ungeborene Kinder getötet wurden
Vatikan (kath.net)
Papst Franziskus hat vergangenen Woche bei einem Treffen mit US-Bischöfen in Rom betont, dass der der Schutz der ungeborenen Kinder von “überragender Priorität” für die Kirche sei und stimmte damit mit er Prioritätensetzung der US-Bischöfe überein. Dies berichtet CNS. Er zeigte sich überascht, als er erfuhr, dass seit der gesetzlichen Freigabe der Abtreibung in den USA im Jahr 1973 mehr als 60 Millionen ungeborene Kinder getötet wurden. Erzbischof Joseph F. Naumann von Kansas City, der auch Vorsitzender des Pro-Life Komitees der US-Bischofskonferenz ist, war einer einer 15 Bischöfe, die beim Papst zum “Ad Limina”-Besuch waren.

Source: kath.net