Rickie Martin, Mathew Broderick and Sarah Jessica Parker, Elton John, and Nicole Kidman have all become parents in the past few years thanks to women who "donate" their eggs and women who carry the babies.
Kidman is also the mother of two children through adoption with former husband Tom Cruise. The list of Hollywood entertainers who adopted children stretches as far back as Hollywood and includes Bob Hope, George Burns and Gracie Allen, Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, Joan Fontaine, James Cagney, June Allyson, Perry Como, and of course, Ronald Regan and Jane Wyman. In recent times it includes Sandra Bullock, Jamie Lee Curtis and Christopher Guest, Sheryl Crow, Edie Falco, Mia Farrow, Calista Flockhart, Mariska Hargitay, Katherine Heigl, Hugh Jackman, Diane Keaton, Madonna, Rosie O'Donnell, Paula Poundstone, Marie Osmond, Michelle Pfeiffer, Denise Richards, Sharon Stone, and of course adoptive mother extraordinaire Angelia Jolie--to name a few.
ADOPTING A BABY AS AN IMAGE PICKER-UPPER
|Kim Kardashian, mere etre?|
While I don't doubt that some of these celebrity parents are motivated by love for children, these high-tech births and adoptions smack of publicity-seeking, priviledge, and raw power. With enough money, anyone can be a parent. While it used to be the rich got richer and the poor had babies, now it seems that the rich get richer and have the babies of the poor.
Surely these people must realize that mothers don't give up babies simply to be spared the burden of raising them, but do so because of the lack of resources to care for them. And while surely some women donate eggs to their relatives, most do it for the money, just as women in places like India carry fetuses to term to have enough money to buy a house.
Do these adoptive parents or parents through surrogacy think about the women who lose in these transactions? The mothers who grieve over the loss of their children. The women who risk their health to produce eggs or carry babies. Do these wealthy unnatural parents consider helping mothers keep their babies? Are they aware of how the adoption industry--abetted by conservative religious authorities-- manipulate vulnerable mothers into surrendering? Have they read about fathers denied the right to raise their children by harsh and unfair laws? Do they realize college coeds are lulled into thinking that their eggs are nothing but tissue to be sold for profit?
Do they think about the lives these children acquired from the bodies of others will lead? Because of their parents' demanding schedules, most of these children will be raised by nannies and many sent to boarding schools. Because of sealed records, the children, particularly those born with donated eggs or sperm, may never know their biological origins. By the time they graduate from, high school, some may well be orphans. When Robert De Niro's new daughter is in the fifth grade, he was be 78. By the time she graduates from high school, he will be 85 or 86 and possibly in a walker, if he is still alive. Yes, this daughter of his will probably have enough money to live well, but there is so much more to a fulfilled life than money.
What are these people who create babies this way thinking? How selfish are they? While capitalists and conservatives scream for fewer regulations, we believe that this manufacture of children should be tightly regulated and that it should be illegal to do it for money, as is the case in some countries. Removing the exchanging of shekels for a baby would immediately curtail their production.
THE BRAVE NEW WORLD OF BABIES TO ORDER
By acquiring children through adoption and creating them through artificial means, these wealthy celebrity parents are normalizing the experience, and thus encouraging others to do likewise. It is not enough simply to want a child; the moral decision would be to care for motherless and fatherless children already here. If they truly wanted to do the right thing, they would take children out of foster care who do need permanent parents and homes. In the process of furthering this new and disturbing trend of manufacturing babies to order, they likewise further the exploitation of vulnerable women, and create children who are not grounded to their history and the history of the world. It is indeed a brave new world these individuals must one day face.
Action is the Sincerest form of thanks
What's wrong with fertile women adopting?
What We Think About Adoption
Egg Donors or Egg Sellers?