California Congressman Adam Schiff recently introduced a new bill that would radically redefine “infertility” at the expense of children’s rights.
The Equal Access to Reproductive Care Act purportedly aims to help those struggling with infertility while expanding the definition of “infertility” to include those who cannot reproduce “either as a single individual or with a partner without medical intervention.”
In other words, 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.” This, of course, ignores the biological reality that a man and woman are needed to procreate.
Currently, in the United States, couples are eligible to receive tax benefits for fertility treatments only if they are in a heterosexual relationship, since these are the only relationships capable of fertility. However, sexual revolutionaries view nature and biological truths as an injustice.
As a result, representatives like Schiff are catering to the LBGT activists and disregarding basic science and natural law, which can only result in the further breakdown of the family. Untethering language from reality doesn’t change reality; it only creates mass delusion and real injustice. In this case, children are gravely commodified and disadvantaged.
In his press release, Rep. Schiff said, “Right now, our tax code is sorely outdated and makes it harder for LGBTQ+ individuals and couples to afford treatments to bring children into their families, such as IVF. This bill would rectify this iniquity by allowing LGBTQ+ couples to deduct the cost of assisted reproductive treatments as a medical expense—a privilege heterosexual couples already have.”
“Every person regardless of their sexual orientation, gender identity, ability, or relationship status deserves the same opportunity to start and expand a family,” he continued.
This proposal neglects the needs of children and is an entirely adult-centered. As Joseph Backholm of World Magazine puts it, this legislation treats a child as “an accessory that exists to meet the needs of adults.”
It also strips children of their natural right to both a mother and father.
Adults don’t have the right to a child, but children do have the right to their biological mother and father. They suffer tremendously in every area of life when this right is infringed upon.
This is why providing fertility support to anyone who wants it, regardless of their relationship status or sexual orientation, is both irresponsible and immoral.
“In his view, the adults deserve the child simply because they want the child,” Backholm explains. “Any disadvantage the child experiences by being commodified and denied a relationship with one or both of his or her parents is outweighed by the emotional satisfaction the adults will experience.However, if the needs of children are primary, a child’s right to be known and loved by his or her mother and father is more important than the adult desire to have a child. After all, men cannot mother and women cannot father. Children need both mothers and fathers.”
Further, this legislation encourages the use of technology to bring children into the world, which has serious moral implications. Surrogacy, for example, intentionally separates a child from one or both of his biological parents. Surrogate children are more likely to experience depression, abandonment issues, and emotional problems throughout their lives.
Artificial reproduction often disregards the physical as well as the emotional well-being of lab-created children, as only 7% of children created in a lab will be born alive. Most will perish in forgotten freezers, won’t survive “thawing,” fail to implant, be discarded if they’re non-viable or the wrong sex, be “selectively reduced,” or be donated to research.
Approximately 12 percent of married couples suffer from infertility or struggle to sustain a pregnancy, and they endure heartbreak as they struggle to conceive in a society that is increasingly devaluing the prospect of having children. Still, while their desire to have children is wonderful, we must always put the rights of children first.
