Book Review

Protect children from the fertility industry

Marriage and the Public Good: Ten Principles

by the Witherspoon Institute

a 76 pp. booklet

Excerpts of some of the 10 Principles:  

Protect the interests of children from the fertility industry.  Treating the making of babies as a business like any other is fundamentally inconsistent with the dignity of human persons and the fundamental needs of children.  Among the proposals we urge Americans to consider, following in the footsteps of countries such as Italy and Sweden:

1. Ban the use of anonymous sperm and egg donation for all adults.  Children have a right to know their biological origins.  Adults have no right to strip children of this knowledge to satisfy their own desires for a family.

2. Consider restricting reproductive technologies to married couples.

3. Refuse to create legally fatherless children.  Require men who are sperm donors (and/or clinics as their surrogates) to retain legal and financial responsibility for any children they create who lack a legal father.

The most important changes underwriting the current United States fertility industry are not technological; rather they are social and legal.  Both law and culture have stressed the interests of adults to the exclusion of the needs and interests of children.  Parents seeking children deserve our sympathy and support.  But we ought not, in doing so, deliberately create an entire class of children who are deprived of their natural human right to know their own origins and their profound need for devoted mothers and fathers.                           

Also:

Protect the public understanding of marriage as the union of one man with one woman as husband and wife.

The law’s understanding of marriage is powerful.  Judges should not attempt to redefine marriage by imposing a new legal standard of what marriage means, or falsely declaring that our historic understanding of marriage as the union of one man and one woman is rooted in animus or unreason.  Nor should the law send a false message to the next generation that marriage itself is irrelevant or secondary, by extending marriage benefits to couples or individuals who are not married.

1. Resist legislative attempts to create same-sex marriage; use legislative mechanisms to protect the institution of marriage as a union of a male and female as sexually complementary spouses.  We urge our elected officials to support legislation that will properly define and promote a true conception of marriage.  Likewise, we call on our elected representatives to vote against any bills that would deviate from this understanding of marriage.  (We do not object to two or more persons, whether related or not, entering into legal contracts to own property together, share insurance, make medical decisions for one another, and so on.)

2. End the court-created drive to create and impose same-sex marriage.  We call on courts directly to protect our understanding of marriage as the union of husband and wife.  Radical judicial experiments that coercively alter the meaning of marriage are bound to make creating and sustaining a marriage culture more difficult, especially when such actions are manifestly against the will of the American people.
   
3. Refuse to extend marital legal status to cohabiting couples.  Powerful intellectual institutions in family law, including the American Law Institute, have proposed that America follow the path of many European nations and Canada in easing or erasing the legal distinction between marriage and cohabitation.  But we believe it is unjust as well as unwise to either (a) impose marital obligations on people who have not consented to them or (b) extend marital benefits to couples who are not married.

Makes sense?  Read more of Marriage and the Public Good: Ten Principles

by the Witherspoon Institute at http://www.winst.org/family_marriage_and_democracy/WI_Marriage.pdf

You can also order the 76 pp. booklet at

http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/marriage-and-the-public-good-ten-principles/427004