Church's Policy on Surrogacy - Looking for Input

[smac97]

I am looking for input on the Church's policy on surrogacy:

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38.6.22

Surrogate Motherhood

The pattern of a husband and wife providing bodies for God’s spirit children is divinely appointed (see 2.1.3). For this reason, the Church discourages surrogate motherhood. However, this is a personal matter that is ultimately left to the judgment and prayerful consideration of the husband and wife.

Children who are born to a surrogate mother are not born in the covenant. Following their birth, they may be sealed to parents only with the approval of the First Presidency (see 38.4.2.7). The parents write a letter to the First Presidency and give it to the stake president. If he supports the request, he submits the letter along with his own letter.

I have never given this matter much thought.  As I am curious about the Church's policy of "discouraged, but allowed," I asked Grok to summarize the the moral, legal and ethical arguments typically cited in relation to surrogacy.  The results:

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Arguments against surrogacy cluster around the child, the woman who carries, and what a contract is allowed to do with either.

Child

• The child is the one party who never consented and is treated as the object of a deal.

I struggle with this.  No child consents to anything, not to being born, not to being adopted, (in younger years) not to which parent gets custody, and so on.  While I think the child has a "right to life," talking about an in utero baby's "consent" seems odd to me.  The law already treats children as the subject of other people’s decisions. The distinctive wrong, then, appears to be pre-conception contracting for delivery of a child to paying strangers.  Commercial surrogacy makes a child’s coming-into-being and first placement the performance of a contract between adults, rather than the consequence of a pregnancy that is not for sale. Adoption and custody respond to a child who is already among us. Surrogacy orders a child into existence so that someone else can take delivery. Lack of consent is shared with all births. Being the specified object of a paid transfer is not.

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• Splitting genetic, gestational, and social parenthood on purpose is said to complicate identity, kinship, and the child’s claim to know and be raised by the people who made and carried them.
• If the intended parents separate, die, or reject the baby (disability, sex, “too many”), the child can be legally stranded.
• Some argue there is a right not to be created as a product or to have gestation turned into a paid service.

I think these points are stronger.

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The surrogate

• Commodification: pregnancy and birth are not like renting a room; paying for them treats the woman’s body and the baby as market inputs.
• Exploitation: money flows toward women with fewer options (class, race, cross-border arrangements). “Choice” under financial pressure is contested.
• Medical risk is real and not fully transferable by contract (preeclampsia, C-section, infertility, death). Intended parents get the child; she keeps the body.
• Bonding and regret: law can order her not to be a mother after she has been one physiologically. Critics call that a forced alienation, not a clean service.

Yep.

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Family and social meaning

• It severs sex, marriage, gestation, and parenthood by design. Natural-law and many religious accounts treat that bundle as the moral setting for a child, not a menu.
• It can sidestep the hard cases of infertility with a market fix instead of adoption of children who already exist.

I think these are valid points.

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• Same-sex and single intended parenthood is sometimes opposed on those family-structure grounds (this is a distinct argument from the exploitation argument; they often travel together and sometimes do not).

I need to think about this one.  

Single motherhood after a breakup or a death is a loss the child suffers inside a story that was not written to exclude a parent. Planned single parenthood, or a same-sex couple using a donor and a surrogate, is a decision that by design means that a child will likely never have a mother or a father as a parent. The adults chose the gap before the child existed.

Regarding father absence / single-mother households, the literature is large, long-running, and not subtle. Children raised without their father, on average, do worse on schooling, mental health, and later family formation. Better studies try to get past raw correlation; the pattern survives a lot of that work. Early absence is worse than later. 

As with most controversial sociopolitical and moral issues these days, I am concerned about the evaluation of data without one side or the other (or both) trying to put their proverbial thumb on the scales.  For example, an article published by Cornell University, What does the scholarly research say about the well-being of children with gay or lesbian parents?, sounds fairly persuasive:

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Overview: We identified 79 scholarly studies that met our criteria for adding to knowledge about the well-being of children with gay or lesbian parents. Of those studies, 75 concluded that children of gay or lesbian parents fare no worse than other children. While many of the sample sizes were small, and some studies lacked a control group, researchers regard such studies as providing the best available knowledge about child adjustment, and do not view large, representative samples as essential. We identified four studies concluding that children of gay or lesbian parents face added disadvantages. Since all four took their samples from children who endured family break-ups, a cohort known to face added risks, these studies have been criticized by many scholars as unreliable assessments of the well-being of LGB-headed households. Taken together, this research forms an overwhelming scholarly consensus, based on over three decades of peer-reviewed research, that having a gay or lesbian parent does not harm children.

"{O}verwhelming scholarly consensus" about a controversial sociopolitical issue doesn't really carry much cachet these days.

Apparently last assembled around 2015 (!), the articles criteria are wide: small convenience samples with no control group still “count.” Seventy-five papers are filed as “no worse.” Four (cited as Regnerus, Sullins, Allen, Sarantakos) are characterized as tainted because, the site says, they sampled kids from break-ups.

That move is the thumb. If a same-sex household often begins after a heterosexual union ends, then “we only count stable planned two-mom homes” deletes most of the real population and most of the instability that family-structure research treats as part of the treatment, not a nuisance.  Vote-counting also cannot answer the question I think we should actually care about. “Does this paper’s abstract say the kids are fine?” is not “does planned father-absence cost the same as a dad who died?” Seventy-five abstracts can be true in their own samples (selected, parent-reported, age 8, high SES lesbian moms) and still fail as a test of designed absence of a father or a mother.

Here is a Grok-generated summary of several studies I have looked at in the past:

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1. Walter Schumm, Same-Sex Parenting Research: A Critical Assessment (Wilberforce, 2018)

Kansas State family-science professor. Not a new survey. It is a 500-citation audit of what the literature actually measured versus what the abstracts claimed.

He walks topic by topic (how many such children there are, couple stability, parenting style, child mental health, education, sexual identity) and shows where reviews ignored contrary tables, used volunteer moms, or treated parent-report as gospel. He grants warmth and time-with-kids often look good. He does not grant “no differences” on stability (especially lesbian couples with children), child LGB identification, or child-reported distress. He is explicit when the data are thin.

Link (publisher): https://www.wilberforcepublications.co.uk/same-sex-parenting-research
Review that tracks the book: https://www.affinity.org.uk/news/621-what-does-the-research-on-same-sex-parenting-tell-us/

2. D. Paul Sullins, NHIS papers (2015–2017, plus later restatements)

Catholic University sociologist. Uses the National Health Interview Survey: hundreds of thousands of children, a few hundred in same-sex parent homes.

Main paper: “Emotional Problems among Children with Same-Sex Parents: Difference by Definition” (2015). After basic controls, emotional problems (SDQ-type items and parent-reported “serious” problems) run about 2–2.4 times as high as in opposite-sex homes. Stigma does not eat the gap. Instability explains some of it. Joint biological parentage explains most of it — and that arrangement is possible for opposite-sex married parents and not for same-sex parents. Related papers: ADHD/learning-disability rates; a replication arguing Wainright & Patterson misclassified Add Health households; the 2016 Add Health follow-up on adult depression.

This is the population-scale version of the “no differences” test. The fight is over who counts as a same-sex parent and whether controlling for two biological parents is cheating.

Main paper (journal): https://journaljesbs.com/index.php/JESBS/article/view/482
SSRN: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2500537
Bundle of his papers: https://ruthinstitute.org/sullins-same-sex-parenting-research/

3. Douglas W. Allen, Canadian census (2013)

Simon Fraser economist. 20% sample of the 2006 Canada census — not a clinic mailing list. Outcome: high school graduation among 17–22-year-olds living with a parent.

Children in gay or lesbian couple households were about 65% as likely to have graduated as children in married opposite-sex households. He can split gay vs lesbian and sons vs daughters. The penalty is concentrated in daughters (very low odds in gay-father homes; low in lesbian homes). Sons are closer to null and often not significant. Canada had recognized same-sex unions earlier than the U.S., which is why the file exists.

One hard administrative outcome, not an SDQ. It does not tell you why (instability, prior divorce, selection). It does tell you the “no difference” claim failed on a census graduation measure.

Author PDF: https://www.sfu.ca/~allen/REHAllen.pdf
Journal: Review of Economics of the Household (2013).
Plain-English write-up: https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2013/10/10996/

4. Cristobal Young & Erin Cumberworth on the Regnerus NFSS (2025)

Cornell sociologists. Chapter 11 of Multiverse Analysis: Computational Methods for Robust Results (Cambridge University Press, 2025). They are not in the culture-war shop. They use Regnerus (2012) as a stress test of “garden of forking paths”: rerun the New Family Structures Study across on the order of 2.6 million reasonable coding and model choices.

They expected the critics to win. The negative association with an LGBT parent (versus intact biological married parents) gets smaller under many specs. It almost never goes to zero or reverses. Their line: there is some negative association in these data; Regnerus probably overstated the size; Cheng–Powell / Rosenfeld-style critiques did not make it disappear.

Important limit, which they and honest users should keep: NFSS mostly captures adults whose parent had a same-sex relationship, often after a heterosexual split — not a large sample of planned two-mom/two-dad homes from birth.

Chapter: https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/multiverse-analysis/data-processing-multiverse-analysis-of-regnerus-and-critics/1BAE715CA3FAA5618DCA3802CAEC502B
Book: https://www.cambridge.org/universitypress/subjects/social-science-research-methods/quantitative-methods/multiverse-analysis-computational-methods-robust-results
Cornell note on the book: https://sociology.cornell.edu/news/book-calls-social-scientists-robust-multiverse-analysis

The jury still seems to be out, I guess.

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Legal

• Parentage: who is the mother at birth—the woman who delivered, the egg donor, or the people on the contract? States and countries split. Utah and others allow it under statute; others ban or tightly limit paid surrogacy.
• Contracts about a person: courts are uneasy specific-performing a pregnancy (force her to abort, or forbid abortion, or take the child against her will). If you cannot enforce the core promises, it is not an ordinary contract.
• Payment: many jurisdictions distinguish “compassionate” unpaid surrogacy from commercial; the latter is banned or capped because it looks like baby-selling, which is already illegal.
• International deals: intended parents can be left with a child no country will recognize; the surrogate can be left with a child no one will collect.
• Citizenship, birth certificates, and succession follow blood or gestation in ways a private contract does not control.
• Equality / public-policy: some constitutions and human-rights bodies have treated paid surrogacy as incompatible with dignity or with bans on trafficking in persons.

The through-line is that a valid contract between adults is not, on these views, enough when the subject of the contract is a pregnancy and a child.

The legal complexities are a real difficulty.

Anyway, looking for thoughts/input on the Church's policy.  

Thanks,

-Smac

Edited Thursday at 04:43 PM by smac97

[Amulek]

1 hour ago, smac97 said:

Children who are born to a surrogate mother are not born in the covenant. Following their birth, they may be sealed to parents only with the approval of the First Presidency (see 38.4.2.7). The parents write a letter to the First Presidency and give it to the stake president. If he supports the request, he submits the letter along with his own letter.

Curious. It seems the Church's policy doesn't distinguish between traditional surrogacy and gestational surrogacy.

If IVF itself doesn't alter a child's “born in the covenant” status, I'm having a hard time seeing why the result would be different when the embryo is genetically the child of the sealed husband and wife, but another woman provides the gestational environment.

I mean, if we replaced the human surrogate with an artificial womb or a vat for the gestational phase, would that child likewise not be considered “born in the covenant”?

In other words, is it really the genetics that matter, or the gestation and live birth? If it's the latter, I'd be interested to know what doctrinal principle makes the location of gestation significant enough to change the child's covenant status.

 

[smac97]

14 minutes ago, Amulek said:

Curious. It seems the Church's policy doesn't distinguish between traditional surrogacy and gestational surrogacy.

From Grok:

Traditional (genetic) surrogacy: The woman who carries the pregnancy is also the genetic mother. Her egg is fertilized — usually with the intended father’s sperm, sometimes donor sperm — by IUI or IVF. The child is biologically hers. At birth she is the legal mother in most places until she relinquishes or a court reassigns parentage. That is why these contracts are the legally harder ones: you are asking a mother to give up her own child.

Gestational surrogacy: The carrier has no genetic tie. An embryo is made by IVF from the intended mother’s (or a donor’s) egg and the intended father’s (or a donor’s) sperm, then transferred to her uterus. She is a gestational host only. Intended parents are usually named on the birth process through a pre-birth order where the statute allows it. This is now the dominant commercial model in the U.S.

Is this a correct summary?

I can see reasons why the Church would discourage both forms.

The Church's current policy (38.6.22) is short on purpose: the pattern is a husband and wife providing the bodies of their children; therefore the Church discourages surrogate motherhood; the couple may still decide; a child born to a surrogate is not born in the covenant and can be sealed only with First Presidency approval. Same grammar as the sperm/egg and IVF entries: divine pattern, discourage departure, leave it with a married man and woman.

Gestational surrogacy also breaks that pattern. A third woman’s uterus is doing part of what, on this view, belongs inside the marriage. The child is still “born to” someone who is not the sealed mother. The sealing rule follows the birth, not the egg. So the administrative problem — BIC, whose child is this for temple purposes — is the same whether the carrier also contributed the egg.

Traditional surrogacy adds a second problem (she is the genetic mother). The Church does not need that extra problem to discourage the practice. So perhaps one heading covers the shared feature: pregnancy and birth are hired out or given away.

A few other reasons the distinction never made it into the book:

• Handbook style. These sections were shortened, not turned into a clinic manual. They also do not catalog every IVF variant. “Discouraged / husband and wife / First Presidency for sealing” is the whole toolkit.
• The couple in view is a married man and woman. Same-sex or single intended parenthood is already outside 38.6.9 and 38.6.22. Splitting traditional vs gestational would mostly matter for those arrangements, which the text is not trying to regulate in detail.
• Gestation is not a morally empty container in this theology. “Providing bodies” is not only gametes. Carrying and bearing are part of motherhood. Gestational surrogacy was invented in part so law could say “she is not the mother.” The Church’s sealing rule still treats the woman who gave birth as the fact that has to be cleaned up by First Presidency approval.
• History. Older handbooks said “strongly discourages” when traditional surrogacy was the usual form. The 2020 rewrite kept one noun — surrogate motherhood — and added the sealing sentence. They updated the adjacent fertility section and still did not create two surrogacy boxes.

So the non-distinction is, I think, consistent. If the objection is “a child should be conceived, carried, and reared by the same married mother and father,” both kinds ostensibly have challenges.

14 minutes ago, Amulek said:

If IVF itself doesn't alter a child's “born in the covenant” status, I'm having a hard time seeing why the result would be different when the embryo is genetically the child of the sealed husband and wife, but another woman provides the gestational environment.

A good point.  I wonder if this is part of why the Handbook went from "strongly discourages" to "discourages."

14 minutes ago, Amulek said:

I mean, if we replaced the human surrogate with an artificial womb or a vat for the gestational phase, would that child likewise not be considered “born in the covenant”?

In other words, is it really the genetics that matter, or the gestation and live birth? If it's the latter, I'd be interested to know what doctrinal principle makes the location of gestation significant enough to change the child's covenant status.

I wonder there are a variety of factors that have played a part.  Which of the ones Grok itemized do you think might have been in play?

Thanks,

-Smac

[The Nehor]

Well, perhaps we should turn to scripture to look into surrogacy:

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1 And when Rachel saw that she bare Jacob no children, Rachel envied her sister; and said unto Jacob, Give me children, or else I die.

2 And Jacob’s anger was kindled against Rachel: and he said, Am I in God’s stead, who hath withheld from thee the fruit of the womb?

3 And she said, Behold my maid Bilhah, go in unto her; and she shall bear upon my knees, that I may also have children by her.

4 And she gave him Bilhah her handmaid to wife: and Jacob went in unto her.

Okay, but that is just one incident and….

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2 And Sarai said unto Abram, Behold now, the Lord hath restrained me from bearing: I pray thee, go in unto my maid; it may be that I may obtain children by her. And Abram hearkened to the voice of Sarai.

Then you have levirate marriage where a man was to take his dead brother’s wife as his own and have children that will be the heirs of the dead brother which sounds a lot like surrogacy.

 

Also, did you really have to take time in the original post for some gay-bashing as if they are heavily tied to surrogacy? Just had to get some cheap shots in where you defy the scholarly consensus just because you don’t like it even though it is mostly irrelevant? Is it reflexive at this point?

[smac97]

18 hours ago, The Nehor said:

Also, did you really have to take time in the original post for some gay-bashing as if they are heavily tied to surrogacy?

Thank you for your post. 

As I noted previously, I asked Grok to summarize the the moral, legal and ethical arguments typically cited in relation to surrogacy, one of the responding results of which was: "Same-sex and single intended parenthood is sometimes opposed on those family-structure grounds."  Note that I did not ask Grok about the Church's "moral, legal and ethical arguments," but rather the arguments that are presented in general.  I had not drawn that connection, either as to single-mother households or same-sex marriage households.

So we have here a family structure in which children will be intentionally deprived of either a mother or a father.  When that happens by circumstance, we must cope as best we can.  However, mothers are extremely important in relation to the welfare and rearing of children, and so are fathers.  There may therefore be a derivative moral argument against surrogacy, since it can be the mechanism whereby the child is intentionally deprived in this way.  Whether or not this issue specifically affected the development of the Church's past and/or current policies, I don't know..

I did not "bash" any category of persons.  I noted sociological data, some of which support these family structures and some which oppose them in some way.  And as to the latter, I specifically noted: "The jury still seems to be out, I guess."

18 hours ago, The Nehor said:

Just had to get some cheap shots in

I don't think there were any "cheap shots" in my post.

18 hours ago, The Nehor said:

where you defy the scholarly consensus

The fallacy of reliance on consensus—often called the appeal to common belief, bandwagon fallacy, or argumentum ad populum—occurs when an argument claims a statement or position is true simply because a lot of people believe it or agree on it.

Again: "{O}verwhelming scholarly consensus" about a controversial sociopolitical issue doesn't really carry much cachet these days.

I feel that much of the "soft sciences" in academia are ideologically captured and compromised.  Their interests lie in advocacy of particularized sociopolitical topics and objectives, at the expense of genuine academic inquiry.  

18 hours ago, The Nehor said:

just because you don’t like it

Again: "As with most controversial sociopolitical and moral issues these days, I am concerned about the evaluation of data without one side or the other (or both) trying to put their proverbial thumb on the scales."

I think discussion of controversial sociopolitical issues is being driven more by ideological commitments than by a straightforward pursuit of truth and coping with reality the best we can.  It seems pretty clear that large-scale absence of fathers from the lives of their children has been hugely detrimental to society.  I say so not because I like it or don't like it, but because that is what the data indicate.

As for whether children raised in same-sex households fare better, worse or the same as their peers, again: "The jury still seems to be out."

18 hours ago, The Nehor said:

even though it is mostly irrelevant?

I was laying out generalized observations, most of which I reported as coming from Grok.  If you think any of that stuff is wholly "irrelevant" to the topic, please lay out your reasoning.  I would like to better understand your position.

18 hours ago, The Nehor said:

Is it reflexive at this point?

Given our past history, going back years, I understand why you might impute such a thing.  But as with the endless accusations of "Bigot!", it's not really substantive.  Ironically, your responses to me seem "reflexive at this point."  I would rather we discuss the topic.

Thanks,

-Smac

Edited yesterday at 10:20 PM by smac97

[SeekingUnderstanding]

3 hours ago, smac97 said:

As I noted previously, I asked Grok to summarize the the moral, legal and ethical arguments typically cited in relation to surrogacy, one of the responding results of which was: "Same-sex and single intended parenthood is sometimes opposed on those family-structure grounds."  Note that I did not ask Grok about the Church's "moral, legal and ethical arguments," but rather the arguments that are presented in general.  I had drawn that connection, either as to single-mother households or same-sex marriage households.

As I count it, outside the quotes your post was 569 words long. Supposedly trying to better understand your church's policy on surrogacy. Your post was mainly in response to a grok summary of the issues surrounding surrogacy.

6% of grok's 480 words were on the combined issue of single parenthood and same sex households. So let's say 3% on the gay angle. Of your words? 46%. And this excludes the additional quotes from Cornell and Grok that you included on that issue.

So grok thought it was worth 3% and you made it the thesis of your post. And how exactly does the church handbook policy on surrogacy intersect with same sex couples using a surrogate? Not at all. Same sex couples are excommunicated from your church. They aren't looking for advice from your leaders on this issue. There is zero overlap.

Add in the fact that you completely ignore Nehor's scriptural related references around surrogacy and you certainly seemed obsessed with the gay angle. Extremely so.

 

[smac97]

13 minutes ago, SeekingUnderstanding said:

Quote

As I noted previously, I asked Grok to summarize the the moral, legal and ethical arguments typically cited in relation to surrogacy, one of the responding results of which was: "Same-sex and single intended parenthood is sometimes opposed on those family-structure grounds."  Note that I did not ask Grok about the Church's "moral, legal and ethical arguments," but rather the arguments that are presented in general.  I had {not} drawn that connection, either as to single-mother households or same-sex marriage households.

As I count it, outside the quotes your post was 569 words long. Supposedly trying to better understand your church's policy on surrogacy.  Your post was mainly in response to a grok summary of the issues surrounding surrogacy.

I was trying to lay the groundwork for a discussion, yes.  I didn't really commit to most, if any, of the proffered reasons to oppose surrogacy.

13 minutes ago, SeekingUnderstanding said:

6% of grok's 480 words were on the combined issue of single parenthood and same sex households. So let's say 3% on the gay angle. Of your words? 46%. And this excludes the additional quotes from Cornell and Grok that you included on that issue.

I'll take your percentages at face value.

The detrimental effects on children of being raised by single mothers, with no father in the home, are apparently not really in dispute, anywhere.  So I did not spend as much time assessing this because, well, I doubt anyone would dispute it.

On the other hand, whether there are "detrimental effects on children" from being raised in a same-sex-couple household is very much in dispute.  I quoted sources from both sides of the discussion, and concluded: "The jury still seems to be out, I guess."

13 minutes ago, SeekingUnderstanding said:

So grok thought it was worth 3% and you made it the thesis of your post.

I did not.  It is the most contested point Grok raised (by far, I think), so I presented for-and-against sources, then concluded that the "jury still seems to be out" about it.

13 minutes ago, SeekingUnderstanding said:

And how exactly does the church handbook policy on surrogacy intersect with same sex couples using a surrogate? Not at all.

Well, that is what I was trying to discuss: the potential origins of the Church's policy.  I suspect at least some of the items Grok noted may have been involved in the formulation of the policy.

Grok: "Same-sex and single intended parenthood is sometimes opposed on those family-structure grounds."  Is this correct?  I don't know, but I suspect it has probably been postulated in some circles.  Has this happened in the upper echelons of the Church?  I see no evidence of that.  I asked Grok: "Is there any published statement or evidence that the policy on surrogacy in the handbook of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was influenced, to any extent, but arguments along the lines of 'Same-sex and single intended parenthood is sometimes opposed on those family-structure grounds?'"

The response:

Quote

No published Church statement says the surrogacy policy was written, or kept, in order to block same-sex or single intended parenthood. The official reason on the page is narrower than that.

What the handbook actually says. Current General Handbook 38.6.22:

“The pattern of a husband and wife providing bodies for God’s spirit children is divinely appointed (see 2.1.3). For this reason, the Church discourages surrogate motherhood. However, this is a personal matter that is ultimately left to the judgment and prayerful consideration of the husband and wife.”

Children born through a surrogate are not born in the covenant; a sealing needs First Presidency approval. That is the whole published rationale: the husband-and-wife pattern in 2.1.3 / the Family Proclamation. It does not mention same-sex couples, single intended parents, or “family structure” as a reason to discourage the practice.

What is documented nearby, but is not the surrogacy paragraph.

• Fertility treatments (38.6.9) are for “a married woman and man” / “a lawfully married man and woman.” Donor gametes from anyone but husband or wife are discouraged.
• The older Handbook 1 rule on artificial insemination was explicit about singles: “Artificial insemination of single sisters is not approved.” Those who “deliberately refuse” were subject to discipline.
• Same-sex marriage is opposed on doctrinal family-structure grounds in 38.6.16 and the Proclamation. That is a separate heading.

So the Church does oppose same-sex and (in the older AI rule) single-woman use of assisted reproduction. It has not published a sentence that says those objections are why surrogate motherhood is discouraged.

What commentators infer. Some scholars read the structure as doing that work anyway: the policy is addressed only to “husband and wife,” and the First Presidency sealing gate can keep children of same-sex parents out of a sealing. That is an inference from how the rules fit together, not a disclosed drafting history. There is no First Presidency letter, newsroom Q&A, or handbook commentary that says “we discourage surrogacy because it is a path to same-sex or single parenthood.”

Bottom line. On the evidence that is published: the stated influence is the husband-and-wife procreative pattern, not the family-structure argument against same-sex or single intended parents. That latter argument is real Church teaching in other sections. Connecting it as a cause of the surrogacy paragraph is plausible and undocumented. It would not be accurate to say the Church has acknowledged that influence.

So there may be be some oblique association.  Broadly, children should be created and raised by a man and a woman married to each other.

13 minutes ago, SeekingUnderstanding said:

Same sex couples are excommunicated from your church.

So are people to violate the Law of Chastity in other ways.

So are members who participate in polygamy.

13 minutes ago, SeekingUnderstanding said:

They aren't looking for advice from your leaders on this issue. There is zero overlap.

Well, you may be quite right about that.

Thanks,

-Smac

[bluebell]

32 minutes ago, SeekingUnderstanding said:

. Same sex couples are excommunicated from your church. They aren't looking for advice from your leaders on this issue. There is zero overlap.

 

 

This isn’t completely accurate. Charlie Bird and his husband are still active in their ward and currently navigating surrogacy or adoption options.  I couldn’t find any links that weren’t to his Instagram videos or stuff like that but you can Google it if your curious about it. 

[BRMC]

58 minutes ago, bluebell said:

This isn’t completely accurate. Charlie Bird and his husband are still active in their ward and currently navigating surrogacy or adoption options.  I couldn’t find any links that weren’t to his Instagram videos or stuff like that but you can Google it if your curious about it. 

"Active" can mean many things.  If when you say "active" you are including people who intentionally break their covenants and have membership restrictions, that is one thing.  If you mean Temple Recommend holders who are striving to keep their covenants, that is another.  There are still more who say they are "active" in their ward, but aren't even members.  

[SeekingUnderstanding]

1 hour ago, smac97 said:

On the other hand, whether there are "detrimental effects on children" from being raised in a same-sex-couple household is very much in dispute.  I quoted sources from both sides of the discussion, and concluded: "The jury still seems to be out, I guess."

1 hour ago, SeekingUnderstanding said:

So grok thought it was worth 3% and you made it the thesis of your post.

I did not.  It is the most contested point Grok raised (by far, I think), so I presented for-and-against sources, then concluded that the "jury still seems to be out" about it.

Nope. Every point Grok brought up is a constested point "moral, legal and ethical arguments typically cited in relation to surrogacy". Preventing families that don't look like yours from having children just happened to be most important to you.

[SeekingUnderstanding]

1 hour ago, bluebell said:

This isn’t completely accurate. Charlie Bird and his husband are still active in their ward and currently navigating surrogacy or adoption options.  I couldn’t find any links that weren’t to his Instagram videos or stuff like that but you can Google it if your curious about it. 

I acknowledge that recent handbook changes have removed the apostasy category for same sex marriages and therefore no longer "require" a disciplinary council. It's been my experience that Charlie Bird is the exception that proves the rule, but I will admit the exception and let you argue with your coreligionists if it should be held out as an example or not:

13 minutes ago, BRMC said:

 If when you say "active" you are including people who intentionally break their covenants and have membership restrictions, that is one thing.

 

1 hour ago, smac97 said:

So are people to violate the Law of Chastity in other ways.

So are members who participate in polygamy.

 

[SeekingUnderstanding]

21 hours ago, The Nehor said:

Well, perhaps we should turn to scripture to look into surrogacy:

Okay, but that is just one incident and….

Then you have levirate marriage where a man was to take his dead brother’s wife as his own and have children that will be the heirs of the dead brother which sounds a lot like surrogacy.

Additionally there is the complications of surrogacy when it comes to temple sealings. A couple of my pioneer ancestors were on their second marriages (due to death of their previoius partners). My ggg-grandpa Nathan Staker stood in to have his wife (Eliza Cusworth) sealed to her first husband (Joseph Burton) saying he didn't want to rob the dead. He (Nathan) was then a surrogate father (in his view) for the children he had with his wife Eliza including my gg-grandmother.

Edited 22 hours ago by SeekingUnderstanding

[Calm]

3 hours ago, smac97 said:

The detrimental effects on children of being raised by single mothers, with no father in the home, are apparently not really in dispute, anywhere.  So I did not spend as much time assessing this because, well, I doubt anyone would dispute it.

Actually, I don’t believe the debate is closed because “single mothers” is not inherently equivalent to “no father figure” or “raising a child completely on their own”.  Plus a lot of research on single parent families is based on situations involving trauma of children (divorce, deah, incarceration, relationship instability, etc) rather than the choice of a single woman or man to raise a child on their own while having the support of other adults, possibly even in the home.  Those negative results could be more about the trauma and less about the single parent.

Edited 20 hours ago by Calm

[bluebell]

1 hour ago, SeekingUnderstanding said:

I acknowledge that recent handbook changes have removed the apostasy category for same sex marriages and therefore no longer "require" a disciplinary council. It's been my experience that Charlie Bird is the exception that proves the rule, but I will admit the exception and let you argue with your coreligionists if it should be held out as an example or not:

 

 

No arguing necessary. They are active according to the metrics the church itself uses, and it was meant to share information and not debate a point. 

[smac97]

3 hours ago, bluebell said:

This isn’t completely accurate. Charlie Bird and his husband are still active in their ward and currently navigating surrogacy or adoption options.  I couldn’t find any links that weren’t to his Instagram videos or stuff like that but you can Google it if your curious about it. 

So I found Charlie's Facebook post, with an embedded video of an event he and his husband used to select, from a panel of women, a winning "Egg Donor."  And this comment from him:

Quote

Because we are as gay as they come, what started as “let’s look through some profiles together” turned into a fully produced, pageant-themed event with invitations, a multi-slide presentation, and printed packets for every family member
...
Straight couples have their mating rituals for having children — a romantic evening alone, maybe some candles and mood music… Gay couples, as it turns out, have theirs too… ours just includes a full scale egg donor pageant with our moms.

"Egg donor pageant."

Also, on the TV in the room there is this:

"Whose genetics will take the crown?"

Apparently to clarify what they mean by "genetics," they also have a scoreboard for the "Egg Donors" (not "women," not "prospective mothers") :

In the "Questions about donor night" section of the video, someone asked "What were the highest preferred qualities for you guys?"  The response in part:

Quote

We tried to keep things like appearance, education, accomplishments, and hobbies as smaller bonus factors.  We really didn't want it to {be} about ranking people or deciding whose genetics were "better" (ew) but rather about finding the right fit for our specific family.

They said this, but then proceeded to rank the prospective "Egg Donors" using these criteria.  The event was, in their own words, an "Egg Donor Finalist Night" and "Egg Donor Selection Night," in the style of a "full scale egg donor pageant."

From the OP: "Commodification: pregnancy and birth are not like renting a room; paying for them treats the woman’s body and the baby as market inputs."  Grok in the OP presented this as one of the "moral, legal and ethical arguments typically cited in relation to surrogacy."  Is that what Charlie and his husband are doing with their Egg Donor "Pageant?"  They were literally treating and referring to these women as "egg donors" and ranking them according to specific criteria:

• Intelligence
• Health/Athlete
• Egg Yield
• Beauty
• Family Fit
• Vibes / 'It' Factor
• Logistics / Cost

Charlie Bird: "We really didn't want it to {be} about ranking people or deciding whose genetics were 'better' (ew)."

Also Charlie Bird: "{Which 'Egg Donor's'} genetics will take the crown?"

I did not see, in the Instagram vid or the FB post, whether the winning "Egg Donor" will be involved in any way in the child's life.  

I find this troubling.  Charlie wanting to be a father is understandable. What I cannot call consistent with what the Church teaches about family is treating a child’s mother as optional—or as merely one of a panel of potential “Egg Donors” to be evaluated based on "egg yield," "beauty," educational achievements, "genetics," and so on.

The Church teaches that a child is entitled to a father and a mother in a covenant marriage, and that a husband and wife are the appointed pattern for giving bodies to God’s children. Charlie's plan specifically and intentionally chooses a course of action in which a child will not have that, and he then assembles a genetic mother and a separate birth mother as parts.

If a married man and woman, or a lesbian couple, lined people up the same way, I would find it unseemly too.

Thanks,

-Smac

Edited 21 hours ago by smac97

[smac97]

2 hours ago, SeekingUnderstanding said:

Nope. Every point Grok brought up is a constested point "moral, legal and ethical arguments typically cited in relation to surrogacy".

Not sure about that.

• Splitting genetic, gestational, and social parenthood on purpose is said to complicate identity, kinship, and the child’s claim to know and be raised by the people who made and carried them.
• If the intended parents separate, die, or reject the baby (disability, sex, “too many”), the child can be legally stranded.
• Medical risk is real and not fully transferable by contract (preeclampsia, C-section, infertility, death). Intended parents get the child; she keeps the body.
• Bonding and regret: law can order her not to be a mother after she has been one physiologically. Critics call that a forced alienation, not a clean service.
• Parentage: who is the mother at birth—the woman who delivered, the egg donor, or the people on the contract? States and countries split. Utah and others allow it under statute; others ban or tightly limit paid surrogacy.
• Contracts about a person: courts are uneasy specific-performing a pregnancy (force her to abort, or forbid abortion, or take the child against her will). If you cannot enforce the core promises, it is not an ordinary contract.
• Payment: many jurisdictions distinguish “compassionate” unpaid surrogacy from commercial; the latter is banned or capped because it looks like baby-selling, which is already illegal.
• International deals: intended parents can be left with a child no country will recognize; the surrogate can be left with a child no one will collect.
• Citizenship, birth certificates, and succession follow blood or gestation in ways a private contract does not control.
• Equality / public-policy: some constitutions and human-rights bodies have treated paid surrogacy as incompatible with dignity or with bans on trafficking in persons.

Are you saying these concerns are just ideological?  A matter of preference?  It seems not that way to me.  These are real-world effects.

2 hours ago, SeekingUnderstanding said:

Preventing families that don't look like yours from having children just happened to be most important to you.

Given our past history, going back years, I understand why you might impute such a thing.  But as with the endless accusations of "Bigot!", it's not really substantive.  I find it a bad and troubling idea to deliberately deprive a child of a mother or a father.  Both play vital roles.  In any event, I would rather we discuss the topic, as endless ad hominem and efforts and diverting attention to the individual rather than his argument or the topic slows down meaningful discourse.

Thanks,

-Smac

[Calm]

44 minutes ago, smac97 said:

If a married man and woman, or a lesbian couple, lined people up the same way, I would find it unseemly too.

Happens with dating too.  Rating your potential partners with friends or family seems a very human tendency, if not typically so elaborate.  

Edited 20 hours ago by Calm

[SeekingUnderstanding]

13 hours ago, smac97 said:

 

• Splitting genetic, gestational, and social parenthood on purpose is said to complicate identity, kinship, and the child’s claim to know and be raised by the people who made and carried them.
• If the intended parents separate, die, or reject the baby (disability, sex, “too many”), the child can be legally stranded.
• Medical risk is real and not fully transferable by contract (preeclampsia, C-section, infertility, death). Intended parents get the child; she keeps the body.
• Bonding and regret: law can order her not to be a mother after she has been one physiologically. Critics call that a forced alienation, not a clean service.
• Parentage: who is the mother at birth—the woman who delivered, the egg donor, or the people on the contract? States and countries split. Utah and others allow it under statute; others ban or tightly limit paid surrogacy.
• Contracts about a person: courts are uneasy specific-performing a pregnancy (force her to abort, or forbid abortion, or take the child against her will). If you cannot enforce the core promises, it is not an ordinary contract.
• Payment: many jurisdictions distinguish “compassionate” unpaid surrogacy from commercial; the latter is banned or capped because it looks like baby-selling, which is already illegal.
• International deals: intended parents can be left with a child no country will recognize; the surrogate can be left with a child no one will collect.
• Citizenship, birth certificates, and succession follow blood or gestation in ways a private contract does not control.
• Equality / public-policy: some constitutions and human-rights bodies have treated paid surrogacy as incompatible with dignity or with bans on trafficking in persons.

Are you saying these concerns are just ideological?  A matter of preference?  It seems not that way to me.  These are real-world effects.

I'm saying paragraphs on the pros and cons of each those could have been the thesis of your post. I'm sure you could find papers and studies and discussion on each. Each of those is infinitely more relevant to your supposed topic of the thread (Latter-day Saint church guidance to Latter-day Saints on the topic of surrogacy) than the single line item you choose to focus on: "Same-sex and single intended parenthood is sometimes opposed on those family-structure grounds." 

And you continue to ignore anything in the thread that could be related to the topic (Church views on surrogacy) instead focusing now on some Rameumptom level holier than thou fault finding with Charlie Bird. You are obsessed.

[bluebell]

17 hours ago, smac97 said:

So I found Charlie's Facebook post, with an embedded video of an event he and his husband used to select, from a panel of women, a winning "Egg Donor."  And this comment from him:

"Egg donor pageant."

Also, on the TV in the room there is this:

"Whose genetics will take the crown?"

Apparently to clarify what they mean by "genetics," they also have a scoreboard for the "Egg Donors" (not "women," not "prospective mothers") :

In the "Questions about donor night" section of the video, someone asked "What were the highest preferred qualities for you guys?"  The response in part:

They said this, but then proceeded to rank the prospective "Egg Donors" using these criteria.  The event was, in their own words, an "Egg Donor Finalist Night" and "Egg Donor Selection Night," in the style of a "full scale egg donor pageant."

From the OP: "Commodification: pregnancy and birth are not like renting a room; paying for them treats the woman’s body and the baby as market inputs."  Grok in the OP presented this as one of the "moral, legal and ethical arguments typically cited in relation to surrogacy."  Is that what Charlie and his husband are doing with their Egg Donor "Pageant?"  They were literally treating and referring to these women as "egg donors" and ranking them according to specific criteria:

• Intelligence
• Health/Athlete
• Egg Yield
• Beauty
• Family Fit
• Vibes / 'It' Factor
• Logistics / Cost

Charlie Bird: "We really didn't want it to {be} about ranking people or deciding whose genetics were 'better' (ew)."

Also Charlie Bird: "{Which 'Egg Donor's'} genetics will take the crown?"

I did not see, in the Instagram vid or the FB post, whether the winning "Egg Donor" will be involved in any way in the child's life.  

I find this troubling.  Charlie wanting to be a father is understandable. What I cannot call consistent with what the Church teaches about family is treating a child’s mother as optional—or as merely one of a panel of potential “Egg Donors” to be evaluated based on "egg yield," "beauty," educational achievements, "genetics," and so on.

The Church teaches that a child is entitled to a father and a mother in a covenant marriage, and that a husband and wife are the appointed pattern for giving bodies to God’s children. Charlie's plan specifically and intentionally chooses a course of action in which a child will not have that, and he then assembles a genetic mother and a separate birth mother as parts.

If a married man and woman, or a lesbian couple, lined people up the same way, I would find it unseemly too.

Thanks,

-Smac

Eh, I’m fine with their process, I think they are doing it tongue in cheek.  Maybe they are being more self-focused than they should be but so am I sometimes so I don’t feel like I can really judge them fairly.

I agree that children have a right to a father and mother, but I also struggle with how often God is fine with taking a father or mother (or even both) to the detriment of the children. Mortal life seems to be set up to force us to deal with the less ideal. I’m good leaving this situation between them and God  

 

[Chum]

On 9/17/2026 at 12:14 PM, smac97 said:

Quote

• The child is the one party who never consented and is treated as the object of a deal.

I struggle with this.  No child consents to anything, not to being born, not to being adopted, (in younger years) not to which parent gets custody, and so on.

I have reconciled this in a way that seems to be driving the extraordinarily good relationship I have with (all 5 of) my sons.  

It is my choices that forced them into existence.  They owe me nothing because non-existent beings are incapable of consenting to anything. I had all the power of consent and due to this extremely one-sided arrangement, I  remain in their debt for the rest of my life. I reside in a permanent state of servitude to them.  These are the defaults, our starting points. 

Respecting their consent builds abiding trust at a deep level.  Consent is key to salvation, ethics, ability and love. It hangs out in the very best circles. 

The weight I place on consent flows from Church's teaching about Satan's premortal plan for us - which was based on a lack of consent and the resulting dearth of worthwhile redemption.  Associating those two conditions with evil has changed my relationships with others, in ways that can be indescribably positive. Consent may outweigh even kindness in achieving our most valuable and fulfilling humanity.

Plugging my parenting into all that has been ceaselessly good. 

[Calm]

59 minutes ago, Chum said:

is my choices that forced them into existence.  They owe me nothing because non-existent beings are incapable of consenting to anything. I had all the power of consent and due to this extremely one-sided arrangement, I  remain in their debt for the rest of my life. I reside in a permanent state of servitude to them.  These are the defaults, our starting points. 

This makes much more sense to me than the more typical attitude I see expressed directly or indirectly that a child owes everything to their parents for the favour they did of giving them life and are in eternal debt to them.  I get that aligns more with our doctrine in the sense that we need to come to earth to get bodies, but our brains typically don’t have a sense of the preexistence, so why should we expect our children to emotionally feel that obligation.  And if life isn’t that great for them, why should they automatically be grateful for the experience.  Maybe some day their experiences will lead to an appreciation, but expecting it of them is somewhat arrogant imo.  I think it’s more natural to feel forced into life and if our culture wasn’t pushing the idea kids owe parents everything or kids are essentially possessions for parents to play with how they want or to fulfill their own ambitions with, I think our relationships between parent and children would be healthier.

I think being realistic means even if as children, they are fully dependent on adults, it doesn’t mean they know they chose the conditions (maybe they did, maybe they didn’t) while adults chose to act in most cases to bring them into existence and therefore the adult needs to get over the inconvenience that it creates in their life….though the parent still needs to make choices for their own self care that allow the parent to maximize their care of their children until the child can truly start making choices for themselves and support themselves.  This also should mean the parent should dump any idea of living through their children in any way besides being grateful and happy for them if the child has a life they are fulfilled by rather than mapping out the child’s existence from birth to death for them.

Edited 1 hour ago by Calm

[smac97]

5 hours ago, SeekingUnderstanding said:

I'm saying paragraphs on the pros and cons of each those could have been the thesis of your post.

That more or less was my thesis.  I was presenting some generalized observations and looking for feedback.

5 hours ago, SeekingUnderstanding said:

I'm sure you could find papers and studies and discussion on each.

Yes, maybe later.

5 hours ago, SeekingUnderstanding said:

Each of those is infinitely more relevant to your supposed topic of the thread (Latter-day Saint church guidance to Latter-day Saints on the topic of surrogacy) than the single line item you choose to focus on: "Same-sex and single intended parenthood is sometimes opposed on those family-structure grounds."

I also addressed this point:

• The child is the one party who never consented and is treated as the object of a deal.

I also noted that I agreed with most of the others.

Again, the purpose of the post was to open a discussion.

Quote

And you continue to ignore anything in the thread that could be related to the topic (Church views on surrogacy) instead focusing now on some Rameumptom level holier than thou fault finding with Charlie Bird. You are obsessed.

Again, I would prefer to discuss the topic.  Ad hominem impedes discussion.

I didn't bring up Charlie Bird, but his association with surrogacy brought into sharp relief a number of the issues associated with surrogacy, the most obvious being the commoditization of women.

Thanks,

-Smac

[smac97]

1 hour ago, bluebell said:

Eh, I’m fine with their process, I think they are doing it tongue in cheek.  

Certainly tongue in cheek.  Still quite unseemly and troubling.

1 hour ago, bluebell said:

Maybe they are being more self-focused than they should be but so am I sometimes so I don’t feel like I can really judge them fairly.

I agree that children have a right to a father and mother, but I also struggle with how often God is fine with taking a father or mother (or even both) to the detriment of the children. Mortal life seems to be set up to force us to deal with the less ideal. I’m good leaving this situation between them and God  

If he were not presenting himself as an active Latter-day Saint, I would be broadly indifferent.  But he is, so I'm not.

From Elder Holland:

Quote

At the zenith of His mortal ministry, Jesus said, “Love one another, as I have loved you.” To make certain they understood exactly what kind of love that was, He said, “If ye love me, keep my commandments” and “whosoever … shall break one of [the] least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be … the least in the kingdom of heaven.” Christlike love is the greatest need we have on this planet in part because righteousness was always supposed to accompany it. So if love is to be our watchword, as it must be, then by the word of Him who is love personified, we must forsake transgression and any hint of advocacy for it in others. Jesus clearly understood what many in our modern culture seem to forget: that there is a crucial difference between the commandment to forgive sin (which He had an infinite capacity to do) and the warning against condoning it (which He never ever did even once).

I'll leave divine judgment to God, but I think Latter-day Saints need to be on guard against the sorts of things Charlie Bird is trying to present as compatible and in alignment with the Restored Gospel.

Thanks,

-Smac

[smac97]

48 minutes ago, Chum said:

I have reconciled this in a way that seems to be driving the extraordinarily good relationship I have with (all 5 of) my sons.  

It is my choices that forced them into existence.

This is an interesting thought.  Aren't we told that we chose to come to this earth and have a mortal probation?  How then is any of us "forced {} into existence?"

48 minutes ago, Chum said:

They owe me nothing because non-existent beings are incapable of consenting to anything.

In the Latter-day Saint paradigm, our spirits preexisted prior to coming to this earth.

48 minutes ago, Chum said:

I had all the power of consent and due to this extremely one-sided arrangement, I remain in their debt for the rest of my life.  I reside in a permanent state of servitude to them.  These are the defaults, our starting points. 

That's another interesting thought.  What debt do you owe them?  

I can discern the "state of servitude."  "And behold, I tell you these things that ye may learn wisdom; that ye may learn that when ye are in the service of your fellow beings ye are only in the service of your God" (Mosiah 2:17).  This is particularly so relative to our family members.

48 minutes ago, Chum said:

Respecting their consent builds abiding trust at a deep level.  Consent is key to salvation, ethics, ability and love. It hangs out in the very best circles. 

I agree as to the importance of consent, as it is an expression of the gift of agency.  

48 minutes ago, Chum said:

The weight I place on consent flows from Church's teaching about Satan's premortal plan for us - which was based on a lack of consent and the resulting dearth of worthwhile redemption.  Associating those two conditions with evil has changed my relationships with others, in ways that can be indescribably positive. Consent may outweigh even kindness in achieving our most valuable and fulfilling humanity.

Plugging my parenting into all that has been ceaselessly good. 

I am happy for you.

Thanks,

-Smac

[bluebell]

37 minutes ago, Calm said:

This makes much more sense to me than the more typical attitude I see expressed directly or indirectly that a child owes everything to their parents for the favour they did of giving them life and are in eternal debt to them.  I get that aligns more with our doctrine in the sense that we need to come to earth to get bodies, but our brains typically don’t have a sense of the preexistence, so why should we expect our children to emotionally feel that obligation.  And if life isn’t that great for them, why should they automatically be grateful for the experience.  Maybe some day their experiences will lead to an appreciation, but expecting it of them is somewhat arrogant imo.  I think it’s more natural to feel forced into life and if our culture wasn’t pushing the idea kids owe parents everything or kids are essentially possessions for parents to play with how they want or to fulfill their own ambitions with, I think our relationships between parent and children would be healthier.

I think being realistic that even if as children, they are fully dependent on adults, it doesn’t mean they know they chose the conditions (maybe they did, maybe they didn’t) while adults chose to act in most cases to bring them into existence and therefore the adult needs to get over the inconvenience that it creates in their life….though they still need to make choices for own self care that allow the parent to maximize their care of their children until the child can truly start making choices for themselves and support themselves.

I gravitate towards a mixture of these two perspectives. I do think that children have some obligation to their parents, and I think that parents obviously have obligations to their children. I think the way those obligations play out (and what they are) change greatly throughout life.

From my perspective, I feel like the commandment to honor thy father and mother is a reminder that the relationship is meant to go both ways.