Back in Episode 3, we had a guest named Gary who called in to discuss how to best solve a difficult relationship situation he found himself in. Gary had recently proposed to what sounded like the perfect woman: she understood her place, wanted the same things he wanted, and fully submitted to him in every way.
They were both devastated, understandably so, when they discovered that she was unable to bear children.
My advice to him might have sounded harsh to some listeners back when that episode aired, but I stand by it: there was no viable future for the two of them, however unfortunate that might be.
As I pointed out to him at the time, they may have been able to work around that (admittedly huge) shortcoming if Gary already had children from another woman. Sadly, he did not.
But what if there is another option for couples like them?
Every year, thousands of otherwise healthy women go about their lives possessing fully functional reproductive systems they have no intention of using. Some claim they are “not ready.” Others insist they do not want children at all. Still others waste their most fertile years pursuing degrees, promotions, travel, or the vague project modern women call finding themselves.
Meanwhile, respectable married couples are being denied children through no fault of their own.
We have somehow accepted the absurd position that a fertile woman has an unrestricted right to leave her reproductive capacity idle, while a married couple with the stability, resources, and moral qualifications to raise children must simply accept infertility as fate. We would never tolerate this kind of waste anywhere else. We do not permit farmers to hoard essential supplies during a famine or citizens to refuse every obligation their country places upon them. Yet the most important resource any civilization possesses—the ability to produce its next generation—is treated as a private accessory belonging exclusively to whichever woman happens to carry it.
It is time to recognize that fertility creates responsibilities.
I am proposing a mandatory national surrogacy draft through which medically qualified women could be temporarily assigned to carry children for married couples who are unable to do so themselves. Candidates would undergo physical examinations, genetic screening, psychological evaluation, and a thorough review of habits that could threaten a pregnancy.
Naturally, women who have already produced several healthy children should receive priority exemptions. They have fulfilled their fundamental obligation. The draft should focus first on healthy women who remain childless by choice, particularly those approaching the end of their most fertile years.
No woman would be asked to raise the resulting child. She would merely provide the physical service her country temporarily requires of her.
Some listeners may wonder why Gary could not simply have impregnated another woman himself. Technically, he could have. But introducing sexual contact with a second woman would create unnecessary temptation, jealousy, emotional attachment, and confusion over the identity of the child’s mother.
Modern reproductive medicine offers a cleaner solution.
If Gary’s fiancée still produces viable eggs, an embryo could be created using genetic material from both of them and transferred into a drafted carrier. Their child would remain biologically theirs. The carrier would contribute no genetic material and therefore possess no reasonable claim to parental status. She would be providing an environment, not an identity.
Carrier selection would have to be handled carefully. She should be healthy enough to carry a pregnancy but sufficiently noncompetitive that her presence does not threaten the intended mother. The point is to add reproductive capacity to the marriage, not introduce a younger, more attractive rival into it.
This is also why donated eggs should be avoided whenever possible. If the object is to preserve the couple’s family line, using the carrier’s eggs would defeat half the purpose. Physical health is necessary in a carrier; beauty is not. Nobody should be forced to explain to his child that an entirely preventable genetic compromise occurred because the government confused a functioning uterus with desirable heredity.
The ideal carrier would understand the dignity of her temporary position without mistaking it for membership in the family.
Predictably, critics will call this proposal “forced pregnancy.” That phrase is designed to end the discussion before it begins. Serious people should call it what it is: reproductive national service.
For generations, men have been drafted to defend their countries. They have surrendered years of their lives, endured physical injury, and sometimes died because society determined that national survival outweighed individual preference. We celebrate this as sacrifice.
Yet ask a healthy woman to endure nine months of pregnancy so that a stable family may exist, and suddenly bodily autonomy becomes sacred and absolute.
Why should only men’s bodies be available to the nation?
A mandatory surrogacy draft would not deny that pregnancy involves discomfort, risk, or sacrifice. National service is meaningful precisely because it requires something from the citizen. Jury duty is inconvenient. Taxes consume the product of our labor. Military service may demand everything. Civilization cannot survive if every obligation becomes optional the moment someone finds it unpleasant.
Unlike military conscription, reproductive service would occur under continuous medical supervision. Carriers would receive housing assistance, nutrition, prenatal care, and a reasonable recovery period. Their education or employment could be suspended without penalty. Upon completing service, they would return to their lives having made a measurable contribution to the future of the country.
Many might even discover that motherhood was what they wanted all along. They would not keep the drafted child, obviously, but the experience could correct some of the misconceptions they had absorbed about pregnancy and inspire them to begin families of their own.
Opponents will inevitably ask what happens if a carrier changes her mind.
The answer is simple: contracts, laws, and national obligations cannot cease to exist whenever a participant becomes emotional.
The intended parents have invested genetic material, money, preparation, and hope into the pregnancy. They have selected a name, prepared a home, and organized their lives around the arrival of their child. The carrier, by contrast, has supplied temporary biological accommodation. Her feelings deserve appropriate medical attention, but they cannot override the rights of the actual mother and father.
She would have no authority to terminate the pregnancy, retain the child, demand visitation, or interfere with parental medical decisions. Those choices belong to the people whose child she is carrying.
Some will say that gestation itself creates motherhood. Curiously, these are often the same people who insist that biology is irrelevant whenever a more fashionable definition of family is desired. They cannot have it both ways. If parenthood is defined by intention and commitment, the intended couple are the parents from conception. If it is defined genetically, they are still the parents. The carrier qualifies under neither standard.
Her preferences matter only within the boundaries of the service she has been assigned to perform.
I understand that this proposal will sound extreme to people trained to believe that every private desire is a human right. But societies are ultimately measured by what they are willing to preserve.
The family is the foundation of civilization. Children are its future. Fertility is not a lifestyle accessory, and leaving it unused while worthy couples remain childless is not freedom. It is waste dressed up as empowerment.
Gary’s situation did not need to end the way I once believed it did. He and his fiancée could have married. Their child could have inherited both of their genes. A suitable woman with no immediate reproductive plans of her own could have carried the pregnancy, delivered the baby, and returned to her previous life. Everyone would have been given a role consistent with what they were capable of providing.
Gary would become a father. His wife would become a mother. Their carrier would have performed a valuable public service.
The only thing standing in the way is our irrational conviction that the temporary preferences of one fertile woman should outweigh the permanent future of an entire family.
That is not compassion. It is reproductive selfishness.
A nation that can draft its sons to defend the future should be prepared to draft its daughters to create one.
And to end this episode on a happy note, here is a comment received from a listener recently that I thought was worth sharing. Identifying himself as “Just a Guy,” he wrote the following:
Hey Derek, just wanted to write you a note after listening to episode 3. My initial reaction was to feel bad for both Gary and his girlfriend, but your response to his guilt was really refreshing. The way you reframed the issue and your advice made several things click to me that I hadn’t put words to before hearing you say it out loud. The episode finally gave me the spine I needed to dump my own girlfriend who had let herself go and gained a lot of weight. I’d been thinking of doing it for months, but I stayed out of pity. I feel so much better now that I am rid of her, she was really dragging me down and I needed a jolt to really see it.
#reproduction #gender #attraction #marriage #surrogacy #law #politics #government #marriage