THE brave new world of commercial reproduction creates a welter of interesting stories for journalists. There is never a dull day for the news media as long as the child-production factories, with their sleek labs and carpeted waiting rooms, roll along. Engineering human life is extremely complex and therefore extremely interesting. For instance, Cathy Lynn Grossman, (beaming in the photo above) of USA Today, reported earlier this week on the legal “challenges” involved in the cold-blooded, high-tech market for children. Who will be called a mother when one woman provides the eggs and another the womb? It is extremely complex and therefore extremely interesting. It was as if the beaming Grossman were reporting on the latest exciting app for IPhones. We are told the various legal and commercial maneuvers two homosexual men go through to procure twin girls, with the only drawback being that it is all so complex. She wrote:

For some babies today, there’s no simple answer — biologically or legally.

Advances in artificial reproductive technologies, mean a baby could have three “mothers” — the genetic mother, the birth mother and the intended parent, who may be a woman or a man.

Mother here may not be mother there. Mother now may not be mother later. Statutes on surrogacy, adoption, divorce and inheritance vary state by state, court by court, decision by decision. For non-traditional couples, the patchwork of laws makes it even more complex. New York allows gay marriage but forbids surrogacy, while Utah permits surrogacy but bans gay marriage.

In the complex cases of 21st-century family formation, challenges abound. Courts are struggling to sort through these complications.

— Comments —

TEXANNE, who sent the link, writes:

This article hints at the existential crisis in a way that even secularists can begin to see a problem — though it’s unlikely they would comprehend how we got to this point.

“Words are, to us, the Medium of Thought; we cannot conceive of Things, but by their Names.” I came across this quote by Daniel Defoe, and this explains what is happening in our brains. When a word so fundamental as “mother” is altered so as to become meaningless, then how can we conceive of that Thing that it once stood for?

Once the word “God” loses meaning for the critical mass, all other words will eventually lose their meaning — including the basic ones like “good”, “evil”, “father”, “mother”, “man” “woman”, “sex”, “love”. With the demise of vocabulary, it’s not so surprising that we are having trouble thinking. Without The Word, we lose our humanity.

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