by Emma Waters
The Democrats continue to weaponize the administrative state, from the FBI’s raid on Mar-a-Lago to the vast expansion of the Internal Revenue Service.
Shortly after Congress voted, with no Republican support, to expand the IRS by 87,000 new employees, Democratic Reps. Adam Schiff and Judy Chu of California introduced a bill to use the IRS as a vehicle to redefine infertility.
Yes, you read that correctly.
Under the Equal Access to Reproductive Care Act, same-sex couples and single men would be able to “deduct assisted reproductive care, including surrogacy, as a medical expense on their tax returns, without having to demonstrate a medical/physical infertility.”
Schiff’s press release goes so far as to equate the pain felt by fertile, same-sex couples with the pain felt by infertile male-female couples.
Typically, the tax deduction is available for men and women after they are diagnosed as infertile. That’s based on “the inability to conceive after 12 months of unprotected intercourse.”
Schiff claims that failing to offer fertile, same-sex couples an infertility benefit is a form of discrimination. But, of course, such men are not infertile. They aren’t biologically deficient. After all, no two men can conceive a child together.
The Californians’ bill would provide generous tax deductions to affirm an illusion.
By replacing the biological definition of infertility, groups like Men Having Babies are pushing to redefine “infertility” on the federal and state level. Their most recent efforts, in Illinois, resulted in the state redefining infertility to include “a person’s inability to reproduce either as a single individual or with a partner without medical intervention; or … based on a patient’s medical, sexual, and reproductive history.”
That treats infertility as a matter of personal feeling and preference.
Why does that matter?
For one thing, the bill would expand and normalize the use of surrogacy, which is not just another natural way to bear children. It is a complex process involving as many as five different actors, and one that raises all sorts of medical and moral concerns.
For instance, when a same-sex couple uses anonymous sperm or egg donations, they deprive the resulting child of either a mother or father. Male same-sex couples also need a surrogate to undergo dangerous hormone stimulations and a pregnancy.
That transforms an intimate, natural process into a commercialized, order-on-demand market.
That is also not like adoption and foster care. Both of those processes match the needs of children with a loving home. Surrogacy laws, in contrast, do not mandate background checks or home visits to ensure the child is being born to safe, loving parents.
As a consequence, it’s not uncommon to hear heartbreaking stories of male-commissioned surrogate children used for child pornography, pedophilia, or living in homes with men who have histories of sex-related crimes.
Under the innocuous title of “reproductive care,” commercial surrogacy (that is, surrogacy contracted for compensation) relies on male same-sex couples and single men “renting” the womb of a woman.
A recent photo shoot in New York City captured the problem, if unwittingly. It pictured two men looking into each other’s eyes while a pregnant woman stood off in the background, her own face obscured. Rather than recognize the biological reality of conception, pregnancy, and childbearing, this image revealed how surrogacy turns a mother into a commodity.
Women in these arrangements are no longer called “mothers” but instead “gestational carriers,” who offer rent-a-womb services to the highest bidder. (And the price is high.)
The Schiff-Chu bill implies that each person has a right to a child, no matter the circumstances. But children are not accessories. They deserve the chance to be raised by both a mother and a father.
Yes, some children, due to abandonment, death, or unsafe environments, are raised without one or both parents. In those cases, priority is given to adoption, foster care, and community-level support for single parents.
In contrast, same-sex and single-parent surrogacy conceives a child through artificial means. The goal is to raise the child without a mother or without a father. In either scenario, children are more likely to encounter physical or sexual abuse and suffer academic, emotional, and other harms throughout their lives.
Surrogacy, by design, severs the natural ties of children to their parents.
By redefining infertility, the Equal Access to Reproductive Care Act pushes a reproductive illusion, compromises the well-being of children, and commodifies women.
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Emma Waters is a research associate with the DeVos Center for Life, Religion, and Family at The Heritage Foundation.
