David Quinn: Mums and dads are optional extras in the evolution of families
YOU may remember a couple of years back being greeted by headlines about the world's first ever pregnant "man". Newspapers showed a picture of a Thomas Beattie, complete with stubble and manly chest, sporting a baby bump.
But of course, Beattie wasn't the world's first pregnant man. Beattie was a transsexual woman who had the appearance of a man from the waist up but was still a woman internally. That's how Beattie became pregnant. The womb was never removed.
The corruption of language and the deliberate distorting of reality involved in the reporting of this story by media all over the world was quite something, however.
We saw something very similar again this week as the international media reported on how Elton John and his partner David Furnish had acquired a child for themselves using the womb and egg of a surrogate mother.
"Meet the parents: a son at last for Elton and David", ran a typical headline.
The two men had fathered a child, we were informed. Er, no they didn't, because such a thing is impossible.
I hate to have to point out the obvious, but two men cannot have a child together. Haul Mother Nature before some equality tribunal if you wish. Get Mary Robinson on her case if you must. But I'm afraid that no matter how much we lecture and scold Mother Nature, two men or two women -- or indeed one man or one woman acting alone -- will never be able to have a child without outside intervention.
So no, Elton and David didn't father a child together. That child, like every child that has ever been born, still has one mother and one father. Either Elton (63, by the way) or David is the father, and the surrogate mother is, well, the mother.
Now, can we forget for a moment that Elton and David are homosexual because in many ways this is irrelevant to the story. Had they been heterosexual they could still have rolled up to a clinic in California, handed over the sperm, bought some woman's eggs, hired a womb and hey presto, brought home the child nine months later.
Indeed, either one of them could have been a single man, heterosexual or homosexual, and they would still have been provided with the same service.
The fact is heterosexual couples, gay and lesbian couples and single people of whatever sexuality can all avail of surrogate mothers, or donor sperm, in the virtual free-for-all that is California and in various other parts of the world besides.
I also ask you to forget that Elton and David are gay because whenever the issue of homosexuality enters our thoughts, our brains seem to melt. We give in to whatever demands the gay lobby makes of us simply in order to show our "tolerance". So I emphasise again, they could just as easily have been heterosexual and most of the same ethical issues would still have to be considered.
FOR example, how did you react to the news that Cristiano Ronaldo -- a heterosexual single man -- had hired a surrogate mother to have a child?
Did it bother you even a little bit that this child will lack the love and care of a mother? Does it bother you at all when a single woman buys some sperm, becomes pregnant and deliberately decides that her child will lack the love and guidance of a father? Whenever single people or same-sex couples avail of fertility services the result will always be the same -- that child will lack either a mother or a father and this will have come about as a result of deliberate design, not circumstance.
However, there is even a problem when a heterosexual couple uses someone else's sperm or egg to have a child. Although that child will have a mum and dad, he or she will have been deliberately separated from his or her biological mother or father.
Indeed, the name of the biological mother or father may not even appear on the birth cert. In a growing number of cases the names of the commissioning adults, or adult, will appear instead. This is what has happened in the case of Elton and David. Their names appear on the birth cert as the "parents" of the child. In other words, there is a lie on that birth cert. Only one of them can be the parent of that child. The name of the mother does not appear.
How are they going to explain this to the child in years to come? How are the politicians and the courts who allowed these birth certs to be deliberately falsified in the name of the ideology of choice going to explain it?
We are indeed in a "Brave New World" of families. Mothers and fathers are reduced to optional extras. All that matters is what we adults want, rather than what children need. Where are the so-called "children's rights" campaigners when you want them most?
- David Quinn
Irish Independent
