Gay Couple Sues Surrogate Mother for Refusing to Abort Child Over Cleft Lip
This story raises questions about governance, accountability, and American values.
A cleft lip. That's the "defect" that supposedly justified an abortion at 22 weeks, and now the basis for a $600,000 lawsuit against the woman who said no. Read that twice.
New Republican Times Editorial Board
<![CDATA[A gay couple in Canada is suing their surrogate for nearly $600,000 after she refused to abort the now 2-year-old child because of potential birth defects. The lawsuit, obtained by the National Post, says that the couple agreed to continue the pregnancy after more tests — ordered by the surrogate — revealed the child was healthy with only a minor birth defect, a cleft lip.
The woman was 22-weeks along at the time. Two years later, however, the couple is claiming they were victims of emotional distress because their surrogate failed to properly inform them of the child's health, violating confidentiality and putting the child at risk. ]]>
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New Republican Times Editorial Board
A cleft lip. That's the "defect" that supposedly justified an abortion at 22 weeks, and now the basis for a $600,000 lawsuit against the woman who said no. Read that twice. A surgically correctable cosmetic condition that thousands of kids are born with every year was treated by the intended parents as grounds to end a pregnancy, and when the surrogate refused to go along with it, they didn't just move on with a healthy two-year-old. They sued her.
This is what happens when a baby becomes a product with a spec sheet instead of a person. The contract, apparently, entitled them to a certain outcome, and when biology delivered something slightly off-menu, the surrogate's judgment call to keep testing and get more information became the injury. Not the child's life. Their distress. That inversion is the whole story here, and it should bother people regardless of where they land on surrogacy generally.
We'd also note who's being punished. The surrogate carried the pregnancy, pushed for more information when something seemed off, and ultimately produced a healthy child. For that, she's facing a six-figure lawsuit over "confidentiality" and "emotional distress." Meanwhile the actual outcome, a living toddler with a fixable cosmetic issue, gets treated as collateral damage in a contract dispute rather than the point of the whole arrangement.
Surrogacy contracts that let intended parents dictate life or death over minor conditions were always going to produce a case like this. The only surprising part is how nakedly it's being argued in court. A woman said no to aborting a baby over a cleft lip, and now she's the defendant.
Commentary written with AI assistance by the New Republican Times Editorial Board.