In early August, Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez (AOC, D-New York 14th), posted a video of herself beginning the process of freezing her eggs. Soon enough, a social media firestorm around reproductive technology, marriage, and motherhood erupted online—AOC’s leftist followers praised her for “taking control of her own life,” but the political right split on the issue. Some criticized AOC for perpetuating the narrative that women should delay motherhood to pursue careers, and others defended AOC for desiring to have children in the future.
This debate is indicative of a deeper divide. While many popular right-leaning figures are rightfully encouraging Americans to have more babies given plummeting birth rates, they’re calling for babies by any means—whether by reproductive technology or in the typical, tech-free way. But this naked pro-natalism opens the door to the degradation of the family, large-scale loss of human life, and the exploitation of women.
It isn’t just having babies that matters; how we have them matters, too.
Two recent surrogacy controversies tell this story well. In July, a Canadian gay couple sued the surrogate mother of their 2-year-old son. While the woman was carrying the boy in her womb in 2024, the men demanded that she abort him at 22 weeks’ gestation. The mother refused, and the rest of her pregnancy was riddled with conflict. Now, two years later, the men are suing the woman who saved their son’s life for all she is worth.
This month, a surrogacy battle is playing out in Texas. An Alaskan couple demanded that their surrogate, McKenna West, abort “Baby Gabriel” after he was diagnosed with a treatable heart defect at 20 weeks. West refused, and a legal battle ensued. Baby Gabriel’s parents then demanded that Baby Gabriel be denied life-saving surgery upon birth and left to die. Carrying Baby Gabriel, West flew to Texas, where Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has successfully ordered that Baby Gabriel be given life-saving care upon birth. Baby Gabriel was born on August 12th, and the legal battle is ongoing.
But why did it take a court order? Why did Baby Gabriel’s parents demand their child be killed, and when that failed, demand he be left to die at birth? And why are the Canadian men punishing their surrogate for saving their two-year-old’s life?
Because surrogacy invites people to treat women like objects, and reproductive technologies treat children like disposable commodities.
In the Garden of Eden, mankind was given a command to “be fruitful and multiply.” But that fruitfulness must be exercised in submission to God’s created order for marriage, family, and the dignity of unborn human life. A global trend of 73 million abortions annually suggests that when humans play God with procreation, things often go wrong.
If AOC eventually has a child with her frozen eggs, she’ll use in vitro fertilization (IVF) to get pregnant. Though the IVF process exists in theory to create life, it kills more humans than it creates. Most conventional IVF processes create a “batch” of human embryos by fertilizing female eggs with male sperm in a lab. Not all of these human embryos are introduced into the mother’s womb; some are left over as “surplus.”
Eighty-five percent of human embryos conceived by IVF are never born—they may be indefinitely frozen, killed, miscarried, or selectively aborted. In 2021 alone, only 100,000 of 1.6 to 1.9 million human embryos created by IVF were carried to term—1.5 to 1.8 million human embryos were killed or abandoned. There are an estimated total of 1.5 million frozen embryos in the United States.
Humans conceived by IVF are valuable beyond measure as image-bearers of God—but so are their embryonic brothers and sisters abandoned or killed in the IVF process. Human life and personhood begin at conception—even conception in a petri dish. We must not allow an under-regulated and unaccountable IVF industry to diminish our sense of the value of every human life.
As we encourage Americans to have more babies, Christians, conservatives, and right-leaning commentators need to step back and affirm that children are not products to be perfected or commodities to be bought, sold, manufactured, or manipulated—they are gifts from God intended to be treasured by one man and one woman in the covenant of marriage.
Babies by any means aren’t the solution to falling birth rates. We don’t just need more babies; we need more Biblical marriages, more whole families, and more respect for the sanctity of human life from the moment of conception.
