I know, it’s Monday, and only now am I getting to blogging on the NYT‘s "Modern Love" column that ran yesterday.  And I missed it completely last week.  Maybe there just isn’t enough in these columns to justify a weekly commitment on my part.  When they publish a piece on dating or some other twenty-something issue, I am obviously out of the picture.  But this week, they come up with a topic right up my ancient Chinese alley: surrogate motherhood.   What would Taoists and Confucians have to say about that? 

     Lisa Baker writes a niece piece about how emotionally attached she is to to the child she gave birth to (surrogated?  Is there a verb there?) for a gay couple.  Her attachment surprised her.  She had done the research and decided that she could provide, in her words, "an egg as well as a uterus," for the good cause of bringing a child into the life of a committed couple.  But she has needed to see and to hold the baby, which is not easy since she in in New York and they in California.  The fathers have maintained an open relationship with her after the birth, so that she can try to create some longer lasting tie to the child.  But what that tie will be is uncertain, depending not only upon her personal connection with the fathers but with the social and cultural context of surrogacy in the US.

      I think it is rather easy to deduce a Taoist response to all this: why bother?  If a person is unable to create a child, then technology should not be relied upon to accomplish what nature (Way) has excluded.  Instead, the childless couple – gay or straight – should accept their Way and find other ways to live their lives.  Adoption would be the preferred Taoist move in these circumstance: less biologically invasive than surrogacy or in-vitro fertilization, and more responsive to the world as it is now, with many orphans and isolated children out there who could use a better home.  And if that doesn’t work, there are various other ways to surround oneself with children – teaching, medical or nursing care, social services –  if that is the Way of life one seems destined for. 
    
    A Confucian perspective on surrogacy is more complicated, I think.  On the one hand, if the goal is to add to the collective good of a particular family, and if the technology is not too onerous (which it appears not to be), then a Confucian may agree that surrogacy could be a good thing.  Think of the Humanity achieved in this scene from Baker’s article:

 The baby’s grandfather sat next to my hospital bed, warmly clasped my hands and thanked me for the gift I had given his family.

    I can hear the Venerable Sage: "Now, that’s what I’m talkn’ ’bout."

    Gayness matters less here than familiness.  And the loving expansion of the close and caring personal relationships of the family are the ultimate Confucian good.

    But there is a point that would give a Confucian pause in all this.  Baker describes how she placed advertisements letting the world know of her willingness to surrogate (there’s that verb again…):

The process was not unlike online dating, but instead of selling
yourself, you’re selling your genes and your fertility: details like
SAT scores, Ivy League degrees and physical health and appearance get
more prominent play than one’s fetishes and measurements.

    For a Confucian the purpose of family is care.  It is through the care we give to each other that we find our own Humanity and extend Humanity out into the larger society.  It is not about molding the perfect child or selling the best genes.   

     What if the child were born disabled, in some completely unexpected way?  Would the "buyers" sue because the "product" is sub-standard?  Would the "seller" have to accept the "return"?  When impersonal, market considerations and calculations find their way into something so important as creating and giving birth to and raising a child, Confucians would cry "foul."  What matters is not the "market value" of the child’s genes.  What matters is the loving care the child inspires and returns. 

     The danger of economic instrumentalism overwhelming ethical judgment is not peculiar to surrogacy.  It is the way of the modern world.  And that is what makes it so hard for a modern Confucian…