No country for ugly babies

For customers who swing open the door to the patisserie and walk into the brightly lit space—pretty pendant fixtures up above, black-and-white tiled floors with yellow flowers dotting the middle looking up cheerily, a gleaming glass case wrapping around the counter—the rich, gorgeous, exquisite French pastries and desserts sing. What a treat to get to order a slice of a decadent gâteau for a delightful afternoon just recently.

In a mood of reverie, I watched through the glass case as the clerk slid a cake server under one of the slices for me. She started lifting the piece, when halfway up to the pastry box—down fell the cake to the counter, sideways. Bonk. I stared in horror. Now one whole side of the formerly exquisite specimen of dessert is all deformed, ugly, wrong.

Eh. I want ... a different slice?

A homosexual couple in Canada ordered a surrogate mother who was carrying the baby that they had commissioned to abort him—for a cleft lip and possible genetic irregularities. The surrogate mother refused, and it is a happy report that the baby was born healthy with a cleft lip—which is nothing that a simple surgery couldn’t correct.

You’d think that would be the end of the story, awful enough with the earlier demand to abort, tragic enough that the baby was precluded from being raised and loved by his mother and father together, married to each other. But no. Now the commissioning male couple is suing the surrogate mother, a single mom who works as a corrections officer, for $600,000. One only hopes she wasn’t served with a lawsuit inside a thank-you note for having gestated and birthed the baby. Thank you for giving us this life. Also, we’re suing you.

G. K. Chesterton’s Orthodoxy is a Christian classic. In a chapter entitled “The Ethics of Elfland,” Chesterton points out, “There is the great lesson of ‘Beauty and the Beast’; that a thing must be loved before it is loveable.” Any parent reading Chesterton would perhaps recognize a connection there to the proverb, “Foolishness is bound in the heart of a child; but the rod of correction shall drive it far from him.” Parents love their children, however foolish, unruly, and unlovely they may be as little humans. Precisely because of that love, parents correct, admonish, and discipline the children—so that they might grow up to become virtuous, lovely. “For whom the Lord loves He chastens, and scourges every son whom He receives.” The kid may be as ugly as a frog sometimes, but over time the kiss of love, that many-splendored thing, turns him princely.

Yet this is true of all of us. We’re each of us frogs, in differing stages of the school of royalty, that is the school of charity. Now, for parents ever to see the transformation to the fullness of the height of the child, upright in virtue as he is created to be, they must receive him with open hands, arms, and hearts—and stick with him. Through good days, bad days, I-want-to-give-up days, parents ought to be in it for the long game. Eternity is actually at stake. The child would have tremendous difficulty getting to adulthood if the parents were to love him with strings attached, with conditions: I love you, but only if __________. Which of course is not love at all. That would be a contract.

Speaking of contracts, here’s what the couple wrote the surrogate mother to tell her to abort: “Considering that medical tests indicate that the fetus has, or is likely to have, a genetic, chromosomal or other abnormality or defect, and in accordance with article 8.5 (a) of our surrogacy agreement ... we want to inform you of our wish that the pregnancy be terminated.”

In accordance with article 8.5 (a) of our surrogacy agreement. Sorry, kid, but you’ve got a cleft lip. Maybe a genetic something. Not perfect. Not what we ordered—frankly. Refund, please! Nope, we don’t want this one—it’s not pretty enough. Here, see, there’s the provision in the contract. Cakes, goods, babies. Eh. Aren’t they all the same?

But babies aren’t luxury goods. They are human beings, made in the very image of God Himself—each and every one of them, big or small, tall or short, cleft lipped or not. Where would any of us be if the Lord were to love us with a “but only if”? “If Thou, Lord, wilt be extreme to mark what is done amiss, O Lord, who may abide it?” But Christ says, “Let the little children come to Me, and do not forbid them; for of such is the kingdom of heaven.”

As Christians, we had better be sure to think rightly about how we receive children.