When you contract for a delivery of goods in the marketplace, and the goods you get are not what you contracted for, it is perfectly reasonable and even expected that you might go to court. That is, after all, how a free market works.
But what if, instead of contracting for goods, you contracted for a new human life? And what if not only did you contract for a healthy new human life, but you also demanded that this new miracle was female? What happens if you are delivered a happy, healthy boy instead? Should courts be enforcing contracts over the miracle of procreation?
Two women in upstate New York contracted with a fertility clinic near Albany to impregnate one of them with a fertilized egg from the other woman. But contractually, it had to be a female embryo. The woman carrying the baby had been sexually assaulted twice after college and did not want a male body inside her.
“We didn’t want to have a boy because of the assaults and because of the socialization of boys,” the mother told the New York Post. “‘Oh, he’s a boy, let him hit you,’ and all the camouflage and guns don’t help. It reinforces masculinity, and that’s a reminder of the assaults every time.”
Until very recently, human reproduction required a masculine contribution. So perhaps people so repelled by masculinity shouldn’t be manipulating nature in order to reproduce without it.
I have two boys. I have never let them hit me. No father should — except perhaps with a pillow, and in that case, I do love the occasional pillow fight, which my daughter also loves to join in on. It is good physical fun. Children need that. Boys and girls both benefit from having a positive father figure in their life, but especially boys.
It is likely a big problem if the two adults raising a boy view masculinity as inherently toxic, rather than simply blaming evil on people who make evil choices.
From the moment the mother learned the baby she was carrying was male, she “felt like there was an alien living inside of me.” After the baby was born, she would wear clothing during breastfeeding so the baby wouldn’t touch her chest. She literally could not handle even a male baby touching her.
She says she loves her boy now, but she is angry that his maleness was inflicted on her. “It’s about socialization that a boy has in the world,” she said. “Even while we fight against these social norms, this repeated narrative of forced masculinity — and we did not sign up for that.”
There are a lot of things mothers and fathers don’t sign up for when they decide to make a baby together. That is part of life. That is part of parenthood. It’s not like the market. You don’t get to control everything. And maybe, just maybe, you shouldn’t be able to sue someone just because life didn’t turn out exactly how you wanted.
