The Dark Side of the Fertility Industry: Emma Waters

Life is imperfect. We all have flaws, maybe physically, mentally, emotionally, or all of the above. It is what makes us human. There is a growing trend in the medical community, specifically the fertility industry, that is seeking to eliminate those flaws before people are born. Parents are making genetic choices about their children, designing them to be a certain way, which has led to the elimination of the unborn that don’t match up to the desired standards. The “prospective” children have “health scores” while they’re developing in utero. And this is what some are using to determine which embryo to choose. Not only does the fertility industry have this troubling trend going on, but it has worrying connections to communist China. Because of legal loopholes, essentially, China has developed a “rent-a-womb” industry that pipelines children born of surrogates in the United States to “purchasing parents” in China. The problem: it is completely unregulated and untracked.

Here to speak with us about this is Emma Waters, a research associate for the Richard and Helen DeVos Center for Life, Religion, and Family at The Heritage Foundation. Her work focuses on marriage and family, the life issue, and assisted reproductive technology policy.