Confronting the Empathy of Surrogacy

Editor’s Note: The following article appears in the Spring 2025 issue of Eikon.

Last month I had the privilege of joining Jordan Peterson on his podcast.^[1] As an advisory board member for his new organization, the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship, I assumed we’d cover general social fabric principles — one major plank of ARC’s mission.

But once preliminaries were out of the way, Peterson introduced what is likely our biggest disagreement — surrogacy. Specifically, Jordan brought up his friend Dave Rubin, who, along with his husband David Janet, created two children through surrogacy. We would go on to discuss reproductive technologies and same-sex parenting for forty minutes.

Since I’m a great admirer of Jordan Peterson (JBP) and since this is one of the largest platforms I’ve appeared on, I of course read all 2000 YouTube comments. Surprisingly, more agreed with me than him.

Enticing Us Away

Some expressed bewilderment at the kinda-kid-glove treatment Peterson extended to Reuben in their hour-long conversation shortly after Ruben’s “pregnancy” announcement.^[2] Dozens noted that they are huge JBP fans and usually in 100% agreement with Peterson, but not on this. Several wondered if Peterson “had a blind spot” on the issue because of his friendship with Ruben.

Ordinarily crystal clear on human truths such as the distinct but complementary nature of male and female, the importance of marriage, motherhood, and fatherhood, we might think it bizarre that Peterson’s judgment was somewhat cloudy on the question of same-sex parenting. But the correct response is not to scoff at his confusion, but to recognize that every one of us is susceptible to similar compromise when someone we love is complicit in a behavior that goes against the clear biblical, or biological, good. God himself recognizes and warns against the degenerative pull those in our social circle can exert upon us (Deut 13:6–11). When someone we love, family or friend, is veering off the straight and narrow, it’s not uncommon for them to entice us into the ditch along with them. And today, that often happens under the banner of empathy and compassion.

No Room for Confusion About Surrogacy

Few Christians are confused about same-sex parenting. They understand it not only goes against God’s design for the family, but against nature as well. Unfortunately, many Christians are confused about surrogacy. Outside of Catholicism, hardly any denominations^[3] have clear teaching on IVF,^[4] let alone the much rarer practice of surrogacy. When did you last hear your pastor address the issue of surrogacy from the pulpit? Odds are… never. Sola Scriptura all the way for me, but at times like this, an evangelical Humanae Vitae sounds awfully nice.

Because there’s no “thou shall not hire an economically vulnerable woman to gestate your custom ordered baby” Bible verse, and absent official ecclesiastical guidance on reproductive technologies, many Christians evaluate surrogacy not through a biblical lens, but through an empathy lens.

They see their infertile friends desperate for a child. They long for those homes to be filled with little feet. They know “children are a blessing from the Lord,” and if outsourcing pregnancy means their infertile sister will receive that “blessing,” what could be wrong with surrogacy?

Well, unfortunately, a whole awful lot.

For those unbaptized in the world of #BigFertility, you need to know that surrogacy is increasingly promoted as a method for single,^[5] double^[6] or triple^[7] men to acquire children. It is a go-to for celebrities who want both a baby and a bikini bod.^[8] It’s an appealing option for child predators.^[9] It’s how grandpa-aged men take possession of unrelated infants.^[10] It’s a pathway for Chinese nationals to gain US citizenship.^[11] It’s how a “baby factory” dad mass-produced a dozen-plus children^[12] and how a twenty-six year old woman became a mother of twenty-two.^[13]

If we allow sympathy for our post-cancer friend who lost her uterus to cloud our judgment on the never-before-seen practice of intentional mother-baby separation, we throw the door open to utter dystopia. And children always pay the price.

The good news is, there are unambiguous biblical principles that must shape our approach to all reproductive technologies, and surrogacy specifically. Those meta truths must trump whatever empathy we feel for our infertile friend. Christianity’s concern is not validating adults — even if some of their desires are God-given. Christians have a distinct responsibility to children.^[14] Thus, when considering reproductive technologies in general, and surrogacy specifically, it is children’s rights and needs that should rank highest.

Surrogacy Always Harms Children

While there are a variety of adult interests — intended parents, surrogate mother, sperm/egg, sellers, lawyers, fertility doctors — from the child’s perspective, surrogacy requires loss. Surrogacy splices what should be one woman — mother — into three purchasable and optional women.^[15]

1. Genetic mother: the egg “donor” who grants children their biological identity.
2. Birth mother: with whom the baby develops their first, critical bond.
3. Social mother: who provides daily female care which maximizes child development and satisfies the child’s longing for maternal love.

For children, none of these three mothers are optional. If children never know their genetic mother they often experience identity struggles.^[16] If they lose their birth mother,^[17] they experience a “primal wound,”^[18] making bonding, trust, and attachment more challenging. If they are deprived of a social mother their development^[19] is affected and they may experience “mother hunger.”^[20]

No matter what form it takes — traditional or gestational, altruistic or commercial, commissioned by gay or straight adults — surrogacy insists children lose one or all of these mothers. But it’s not the tragic loss of a fallen world which can and should be redeemed through adoption.^[21] It is an intentional child loss because an adult wants it that way. And that violates several biblical mandates.

Child Protection

God insists his people take child protection seriously. It’s one basis on which Job pleaded his innocence: “I rescued the poor who cried for help, and the fatherless who had none to assist them” (Job 29:12). Child sacrifice was listed among the reasons God condemned Israel to Babylonian exile (Ezek 16:21). Even if an unborn child is harmed when his mother is accidentally struck, God insists on proportionate punishment for the offender — an eye for an eye, a life for a life (Exod 21:22–25). Chief among our concerns for children must be their safety and overall wellbeing. Surrogacy threatens both.

Care for the Orphan

You are no doubt aware that God’s definition of “pure and undefiled religion” includes “caring for orphans in their distress” (James 1:29). Adoption is one of the greatest ways we care for orphans.^[22] As the former Assistant Director of the largest Chinese adoption agency in the world, I was charged with upholding state, national, and international standards to ensure that adults were properly vetted and screened prior to child placement. We also ensured that money never flowed from intended parents to birth parents, otherwise it was no longer a valid adoption but child trafficking. In adoption, adults shoulder the load in an attempt to relieve children of the burden of parental loss. Adoption is one way we manifest our undefiled religion.^[23]

Surrogacy, on the other hand, is a means of manufacturing orphans, usually for profit. The process often involves legally orphaning children via a “pre-birth order” that preemptively strips children of a relationship with genetic, and/or birth parents.^[24] There are no adoption-like requirements for intended parents to undergo screenings, vetting, or background checks, a reality that has contributed to multiple stories of children acquired by sexual predators.^[25] The #BigFertility industry is also predicated on direct payments to genetic/birth parents, making it categorically child trafficking.^[26] Surrogacy is a manifestation of defiled religion.

Defend the Fatherless (and Motherless)

The Old Testament includes dozens of commands to defend and protect the fatherless. That’s because, in both BC and AD, children raised outside the protective umbrella of their parents’ lifelong marriage experience drastically diminished physical,^[27] mental,^[28] academic,^[29] and relational health,^[30] exploitation,^[31] and poverty.^[32] The fatherless, then and now, stand out as a demographic deserving of distinct protection because they are distinctly vulnerable.

A follower once asked me, “Why didn’t God mandate protection of the motherless?” The answer is that in Old Testament days they were virtually nonexistent. First, unlike men who can bail post-conception, a woman is required to be connected to the child for the first nine months. Biological systems not present in the father/child relationship chemically knit together mother and baby, making her post-birth abandonment unlikely. Further, if the mother died during or soon after childbirth, the baby would often die as well.

Never before has humanity faced the phenomenon of “the motherless.” Only surrogacy enables what is utterly foreign to the human race — a motherless baby. Some surrogacy apologists point to the dearth of data on children who grew up from birth without a mother as evidence that there must be “no harm.” The absence of data is actually the greatest alarm bell — we haven’t measured it because it runs counter to human realities of procreation, gestation, and early childhood development. Since the data on the harms of fatherlessness are well known,^[33] we can assume that the stats on motherless children, with whom they have a greater bond in the first three years, will be even more devastating.^[34]

Whenever you read of God’s admonishment to protect “the fatherless,” we must assume the mandate applies to “the motherless” as well. Far from protecting the motherless, surrogacy manufactures the motherless.

Sacrifice for the Weak

A biblical meta-principle that runs throughout Scripture is that the strong are to sacrifice for the weak, not vice versa. Here are a few verses that speak to that biblical truth.

• We are to “rescue the weak and needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked” (Ps 82:1).
• God expects kings to take up the cause of the poor and needy, and thereby fully know the Lord (Jer 22:16).
• We are to open our mouths for the mute, for the rights of all who are destitute (Prov 31:8–9).
• Romans 15 explicitly states, “we who are strong have an obligation to bear with the failings of the weak.”
• God warns of cruel and unusual punishment for adults who would cause “little ones” to stumble (Matt 18:6).
• After his archetypal Good Samaritan parable on expending oneself on behalf of the helpless, Jesus commands us to “go and do likewise” (Luke 10:37).

God demonstrated his “sacrifice for the weak” principle on a cosmic scale when Christ, the strongest of all, died for the ungodly “while we were still powerless” (Rom 5:6). Surrogacy violates this meta-principle because it always requires the weak (children) to sacrifice for the strong (adults).

Just as Jordan Peterson can allow human truths to be blurred through the lens of friendship, we too are susceptible to blurring biblical truths through the lens of empathy for adults.

Brothers and sisters, this ought not be so. Your primary allegiance is to God’s truth, which always redounds to the benefit of children. God’s truth requires all of us — single, married, gay, straight, fertile, and infertile — to sacrifice our own desires so the least of these are protected.

^[1] Jordan B. Peterson, “Gay Marriage, Surrogacy, Divorce & Hookup Culture | Katy Faust | EP 527” (March 6, 2025), YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4Q0WXBH0HM&t=632s

^[2] Jordan B. Peterson, “Gay Parenting: Promise and Pitfalls | Dave Rubin | EP 266” (June 29, 2022), YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75uuWtRrnJI.

^[3] Emma Waters, “Protestant Denominations Need Stronger Leadership on Assisted Reproductive Technology” American Reformer, last modified January 22, 2024, https://americanreformer.org/2024/01/protestant-denominations-need-stronger-leadership-on-assisted-reproductive-technology/.

^[4] Katie Breckenridge, “IVF Harms to Children.” Them before Us, last modified July 15, 2022, https://thembeforeus.com/ivf-harms-to-children/.

^[5] Edward Segarra, “Andy Cohen Reveals Daughter’s Birth via Gestational Surrogacy Was ‘One of the First’ in NY,” USA TODAY, last modified June 4, 2023, https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/celebrities/2023/06/04/andy-cohen-daughter-lucy-born-gestational-surrogacy-new-york/70286590007/#.

^[6]  Katy Faust, X (Formerly Twitter), posted March 1, 2022, https://x.com/advo_katy/status/1504151487479439361?s=46&t=cKLtc4iwUxQ2wF82Hup9nw.

^[7] Kai Xiang Teo, “We’re a Gay Throuple Who’ve Spent Over $1700,000 on Surrogacy and Adoption,” Business Insider, last modified October 23, 2023, https://www.businessinsider.com/gay-throuple-spending-on-surrogacy-adoption-2023-9.

^[8] Johnni Macke, “Khloe Kardashian Shares Cryptic Message amid Surrogacy News,” Us Weekly, last modified July 21, 2022, https://www.usmagazine.com/celebrity-news/news/khloe-kardashian-shares-cryptic-message-amid-surrogacy-news/.

^[9] Katy Faust, “Meet 5 Accused Pedophiles Who Bought Kids through Surrogacy,” The Federalist, last modified January 22, 2024, https://thefederalist.com/2024/01/22/meet-5-accused-pedophiles-who-bought-kids-through-surrogacy/.

^[10] SurrogacyConcern, X (Formerly Twittter), posted on November 2, 2025, https://x.com/surrogconcern/status/1728530554449166484?s=46&t=cKLtc4iwUxQ2wF82Hup9nw.

^[11] Emma Waters, “U.S. Surrogacy Industry Lures Alarming Number of Chinese Nationals,” The Federalist, last modified December 14, 2023, https://thefederalist.com/2023/12/14/americas-rent-a-womb-industry-lures-an-alarming-number-of-chinese-nationals/.

^[12] British Broadcasting Association, “Mitsutoki Shigeta: “Baby Factory” Dad Wins Paternity Rights,” last modified November 20, 2018, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-43123658.

^[13] Elmira Tanatarova, “I Have 22 Children at the Age of 26 and Most of Them Were Born in the Space of a Year Thanks To Surrogacy – I Won’t Stop Until I Have More than 100,” Daily Mail, last modified October 25, 2023, https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-12666255/I-22-children-age-26-born-space-year-thanks-surrogacy-wont-stop-100.html.

^[14] Katy Faust, “Children and the Christian Revolution.” WORLD, last modified October 20, 2023, https://wng.org/opinions/children-and-the-christian-revolution-1697747323.

^[15] Katy Faust, “The Conservative, Pro-Life Case against Surrogacy,” The Federalist, last modified December 4, 2023, https://thefederalist.com/2023/12/04/the-conservative-pro-life-case-against-surrogacy/.

^[16] Them Before Us, “Donor Conception,” accessed March 26, 2025, https://thembeforeus.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Donor-Conception-Handout.pdf.

^[17] Olivia Maurel, “I Was Born via Surrogate… But from Day One There Was No Bond with My Mother and My Childhood Was…” Daily Mail, last modified January 11, 2024, https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-12948247/surrogate-mother-childhood-unhappy-banned.html.

^[18] Nancy Newton Verrier, The Primal Wound Understanding the Adopted Child. (Baltimore, MD: Gateway Press, 1993).

^[19] Them Before Us, “Gender Matters,” accessed March 26, 2025, https://thembeforeus.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/2.-Biology-Matters-Handout-1.pdf.

^[20] Samantha Wiessing, “I Was Raised by 2 Gay Men. I Still Think Children Deserve to Be Adopted into a Home with a Mother and a Father,” The Tennessea, last modified January 23, 2020, https://www.tennessean.com/story/opinion/2020/01/23/children-deserve-adopted-into-home-mother-and-father/4547829002/.

^[21] Katy Faust, “Third Party Reproduction vs. Adoption- There’s a Big Difference,” Them before Us, last modified April 17, 2017, https://thembeforeus.com/third-party-reproduction-vs-adoption-theres-a-big-difference/.

^[22] What Would You Say, “Surrogacy Is Just Like Adoption,” Colson Center, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NS107WwsJ24.

^[23] Katy Faust, “You Can’t Fix Tough Adoptions with ‘Re-Homing,’ Only Faithfulness.” The Federalist, last modified June 3, 2020, https://thefederalist.com/2020/06/03/you-cant-fix-tough-adoptions-with-re-homing-only-faithfulness/.

^[24] Surrogate.com, “Establishing Parentage in Surrogacy,” accessed March 26, 2025, https://surrogate.com/intended-parents/surrogacy-laws-and-legal-information/establishing-parentage-in-surrogacy/.

^[25] Katy Faust, “Meet 5 Accused Pedophiles Who Bought Kids through Surrogacy,” The Federalist, last modified January 22, 2024, https://thefederalist.com/2024/01/22/meet-5-accused-pedophiles-who-bought-kids-through-surrogacy/.

^[26] Katy Faust, “The Conservative, Pro-Life Case against Surrogacy,” The Federalist, last modified December 4, 2023, https://thefederalist.com/2023/12/04/the-conservative-pro-life-case-against-surrogacy/.

^[27] Colter Mitchell, et al., “Father Loss and Child Telomere Length,” Pediatrics 140, no. 2 (August 2017): e20163245. https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2016-3245.

^[28] Aniruddh Prakash Behere, et al., “Effects of Family Structure on Mental Health of Children: A Preliminary Study.” Indian Journal of Psychological Medicine 39, no. 4 (July 2017): 457–63, https://doi.org/10.4103/0253-7176.211767.

^[29]  Gary D Sandefur, et al., “The Effects of Parental Marital Status during Adolescence on High School Graduation.” Social Forces 71, no. 1 (September 1992): 103, https://doi.org/10.2307/2579968.

^[30] Paul R. Amato, et al., “The Transmission of Marital Instability across Generations: Relationship Skills or Commitment to Marriage?” Journal of Marriage and Family 63, no. 4 (March 2004): 1038–51, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1741-3737.2001.01038.x.

^[31] Darcy Olsen, “Foster Care Children Are Easy Prey for Predators: They Disappear without a Real Search.” USA TODAY, last modified February 24, 2022, https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/columnist/2022/02/24/children-disappear-foster-care-trafficking/6829115001/.

^[32] Angela Rachidi, “Dynamics of Families after a Nonmarital Birth,” American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, (January 2024): 1–22,  https://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Dynamics-of-Families-After-a-Nonmarital-Birth.pdf?x91208.

^[33] The Fatherless Generation, “Statistics,” last modified, April 28, 2010, https://thefatherlessgeneration.wordpress.com/statistics/.

^[34] Erica Komisar, Being There: Why Prioritizing Motherhood in the First Three Years Matters (New York: Tarcherperigee, 2017).