In a key victory for children and the family last June, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) rejected appeals from Italian couples – many of them homosexual – challenging Italy’s ban on surrogacy, which was presented by the media as an “target[ing]” homosexual men “who use it to have children.”
This campaign did not succeed. On April 23, the European Parliament voted to add, as a minimum, the practice of surrogacy to their legal definition of human trafficking. The vote wasn’t even close: 563 in favour, seven against, and 17 abstentions.
It is interesting to observe that the mainstream press perpetually portrays opposition to surrogacy (as well as in vitro fertilization) as an “attack” on the LGBT-identifying people who use these practices to purchase children, though those who oppose these practices object on ethical grounds.
Still, we are treated to ludicrous headlines such as this one, from the BBC: “‘The state says our kids don’t exist’ – how LGBT life is changing in Italy.” The photo is of two middle-aged men holding two infants.
The problem, obviously, is not that the children don’t exist – it is that the mother or mothers have been erased, and that deliberately separating children from their natural mothers so that homosexual couples can purchase them is deliberately facilitating a tragedy. All children need their mothers. Some must go through life motherless, but we once recognized that this was a tragedy – not the desired outcome. LGBT activists and their press allies deliberately miss this point because they want to present their opponents as bigots rather than defend the trafficking of motherless children. But make no mistake: that is what they are doing.
In fact, the press is going so far as to claim that opposition to trafficking in children is contributing to demographic decline. On March 30, CNN published a report with this headline: “Taiwan needs more babies. But conservative traditions are holding back some fertility solutions.” A simple solution, of course, would be to ban abortion or emulate Hungary-style pro-family policies. But those are not the solutions that CNN is interested in.
But I thought the Handmaid’s Tale wasn’t supposed to be an instruction manual.
Wish I’d thought of that line.