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Question about egg donation and surrogate.

MichaelZ

MichaelZ

New Member
Male
I'm sorry the question doesn't sound related to polygamy, but it's my recent confusion.

I fully supports polygamy and I practiced it. Although it doesn't go easily but I trust God's help.

My (second) wife is getting old so she has no chance to have a baby for two of us without miracle. Recently I'm thinking about egg donation and surrogate. My wife and my mom strongly oppose to it. I have searched this topic and found that most opposing opinions are based on monogamy, like egg donation introduces 3rd party into the one flesh.

In my opinion, egg donation is a grey area of the Christian ethic, in which a man gets a baby from a donor woman other than his wives, without having sex with the donor. I have no problem of surrogate mom. I will try not to abandon any of the live embryos.

I want to hear your opinion: can a Christian accept egg donation and have baby from a surrogate mom?

Thanks.
 
Typically the biggest problem is that they freeze fertilized eggs.
In my opinion, they are humans once the sperm enters the egg.

They don’t do one at a time and see if it will work. They do batches of them. The extras are kept frozen, called Snowflake Babies.

The other hard spot is when they plant them, generally more than necessary in order to make sure that it succeeds. If too many actually “take” they remove the excess. So Christian women that understand only allow them to plant 2-3 and are committed to see every fetus through to birth.
 
Yeah, from a scientific standpoint I'd have a serious problem with it. We don't use any chemical or hormonal birth control and never have because of the deaths it causes. If you want children, get another wife who can get pregnant, or adopt. That's my .02
 
To me it’s not a lot different than adoption
I Have an adopted sister , and the things we went through as a family where simply a huge distraction from good family life. Sure my parents made sacrifices that lifted my adopted sisters life like she would have never had.
but …. At the price of family stability and the rest of us where affected both positively and negatively.
the negative was very hard to come to terms with at times and still affects us all 55 years later.
The problems begin with the genetic differences of trying to understand someone else’s child. Children can be a lot of heart ache and pain someone else’s child is heart ache pain and a mystery of a stranger.
but then again, we have friends that have done the egg thing. Rather than see the eggs destroyed they kept going had twins later and they are lovely girls. The girls are now 17 Mum and dad are 65/67 ish.
they are happy and healthy as far as i can tell.
But I would shy away from both options.
it’s nice looking at your own children and seeing your traits in them and being able to understand them.
 
Bigger-picture: God has given you the family you have, and placed you in the situation you are in - for a reason.

Do you really think it would be wise to spend massive amounts of time, money and emotion fighting against that and trying to achieve a different situation than the one He has designed for you, using science? Might that not be working against God Himself?

We don't all need to be the same, to achieve the 1-3 children that society expects. Some women have many children, and some have none. That is the reality of life, painful as it can be (in very different ways) both for the woman who finds herself barren AND the woman who finds herself overwhelmed with babies. Society teaches us to fight against our own nature - for the first woman to use science to have children, and for the second woman to use science to stop having children - so both can achieve the same "ideal" that society currently promotes.

Might it not be better to be satisfied with what you have, and try to find what plans God has for you in this situation? Maybe He truly has wonderful plans for your second wife and your family as a whole that would be unable to be achieved if she had children.
 
Surrogacy paperwork and contracts may be one way for a man seeking an aditional partner in family to safeguard his ability to raise his child. Sadly the legal mess out there favors women being able to destroy a man and his family. But honestly, if he doesn't trust the woman, he probably shouldn't venture into procreating with her. Contracts are an implied distrust, that makes a poor foundation for building a family.
 
Thanks for all the comments.

Here is my biggest ethical concern:

Let's assume there's no embryos will be killed, and just put aside the option of giving birth kids by marrying another woman. Does anyone concern about having a baby from an egg of a woman who's not a wife? (there will be NO physical sexual relation between the man and the egg donor)

Thanks,
 
FollowingHim said:
Bigger-picture: God has given you the family you have, and placed you in the situation you are in - for a reason.

Do you really think it would be wise to spend massive amounts of time, money and emotion fighting against that and trying to achieve a different situation than the one He has designed for you, using science? Might that not be working against God Himself?

We don't all need to be the same, to achieve the 1-3 children that society expects. Some women have many children, and some have none. That is the reality of life, painful as it can be (in very different ways) both for the woman who finds herself barren AND the woman who finds herself overwhelmed with babies. Society teaches us to fight against our own nature - for the first woman to use science to have children, and for the second woman to use science to stop having children - so both can achieve the same "ideal" that society currently promotes.

Might it not be better to be satisfied with what you have, and try to find what plans God has for you in this situation? Maybe He truly has wonderful plans for your second wife and your family as a whole that would be unable to be achieved if she had children.
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Thank you, I will consider about this big picture.

But for now, I want to hear others' opinion about the Christian ethic about this matter.
 
Surrogacy is wrong because a woman is discarding a child that she has conceived. God wants every woman to take care of the child she has conceived. And children are not commodities.

I may have endometriosis (not sure yet), and that can cause infertility. I would never use another woman's body and take her baby. I would prefer to adopt a child
 
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MichaelZ said:
Thanks for all the comments.

Here is my biggest ethical concern:

Let's assume there's no embryos will be killed, and just put aside the option of giving birth kids by marrying another woman. Does anyone concern about having a baby from an egg of a woman who's not a wife? (there will be NO physical sexual relation between the man and the egg donor)

Thanks,
Click to expand...
There is no direct scriptural prohibition.
 
The Revolting Man said:
There is no direct scriptural prohibition.
Click to expand...
Which is however to be expected, because it was a situation that was unforeseen at the time of writing. Which means we have to apply principles to it, making it a grey area because one person might interpret those principles differently to another. And our human tendency is unfortunately to favour by default whichever interpretation aligns with our presuppositions and the course of action we already wish to follow, however shaky that interpretation, and require a very substantial argument in the opposite direction to change our mind.

I suggest you consider the following question @MichaelZ, as it may help you figure this out:

The practical situation, taking the eggs of one woman and implanting them in another, takes two forms: surrogacy (where the man is married to the egg donor but not the woman who is pregnant), and egg donation (where the man is married to the woman who is pregnant but not the egg donor. These are the exact same situation.

Are both permissible, despite both being exact opposites? Is only one permissible? If so, which one?

If you were to do this with two women you were not married to, would this form an obligation for you to marry one of them? If so, which one? What about both? What about neither?

Answer that and you'll know whether you can do this. BUT I would add:
MichaelZ said:
Let's assume there's no embryos will be killed
Click to expand...
It would be better to assume some will be killed, even if unintentionally. This is a complex procedure and it is unlikely that all will survive. Doctors aren't perfect.
 
FollowingHim said:
t would be better to assume some will be killed, even if unintentionally. This is a complex procedure and it is unlikely that all will survive. Doctors aren't perfect.
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This would be my main concern.
You are doing something that isn’t natural, so the responsibility for the death of a fetus would be upon your shoulders.
 
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FollowingHim said:
Bigger-picture: God has given you the family you have, and placed you in the situation you are in - for a reason.

Do you really think it would be wise to spend massive amounts of time, money and emotion fighting against that and trying to achieve a different situation than the one He has designed for you, using science? Might that not be working against God Himself?

We don't all need to be the same, to achieve the 1-3 children that society expects. Some women have many children, and some have none. That is the reality of life, painful as it can be (in very different ways) both for the woman who finds herself barren AND the woman who finds herself overwhelmed with babies. Society teaches us to fight against our own nature - for the first woman to use science to have children, and for the second woman to use science to stop having children - so both can achieve the same "ideal" that society currently promotes.

Might it not be better to be satisfied with what you have, and try to find what plans God has for you in this situation? Maybe He truly has wonderful plans for your second wife and your family as a whole that would be unable to be achieved if she had children.
Click to expand...

I know we disagree on some things but right now reading this I really, really want to hug you! This really made my morning! :)
 
The Revolting Man said:
I struggle with idea that the book written by our omnipotent and omniscient Creator would have blind spots.
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Thank you for putting my muddy mind on this topic into such eloquent words. I tend to reject the idea that Scripture is inadequate due to lack of Foresight.
 
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