Two headlines this week revealed the very same lie.
Dear Christian:
Two stories broke this week. At first they look like opposites. Read them together and you find the same lie underneath both.
In Texas, a surrogate mother refused to end the life of the baby she was carrying. That same week, a Fox News host celebrated the birth of a second child bought through surrogacy—and a national columnist told conservatives to cheer. Surrogacy and abortion are not the tidy, separate debates we thought they were. Both stories ask one question: is a child a gift to receive, or a product to order?
Both stories were highlighted on the August 19 edition of Albert Mohler’s The Briefing.
A Baby Was Born Because One Woman Said No
McKenna West, a nurse from Alaska, agreed to carry a baby for a California couple. Around twenty weeks, doctors found the baby had a serious heart defect. According to West and the Texas Attorney General’s office, the couple asked her to end the pregnancy.
She refused. She traveled to Texas, where abortion is heavily restricted, and the boy—she calls him Gabriel—was born in Dallas. In response, the state attorney general secured a court order that the baby must receive lifesaving care.
In fairness, the couple’s lawyer disputes how the story has been told, calls it “political theater,” and says the parents are simply following their medical team and doing what any loving parent would do. In the end, a court granted them custody. Those facts are not in question. But what West describes—being asked to abort a child because he was not “perfect”—should stop us cold.
The Same Week, a TV Host Celebrated Buying a Baby
Guy Benson, a Fox News political analyst, announced the birth of his daughter through a surrogate. He is openly gay and married to a man, and this is the couple’s second child conceived this way. Many voices on the right sent warm congratulations.
Then a USA Today columnist, Ingrid Jacques, went a step further. She argued that surrogacy can be conservative, and that critics are only shrinking their own movement. That claim deserves a real answer—not a sneer. We will give it one.
One Lie Links Surrogacy and Abortion
Put the two stories side by side. In one, a child is nearly discarded for being “defective.” In the other, a child is manufactured to fill an adult’s wish, with the mother designed out of his life on purpose. Different headlines. Same idea: the child exists to serve the adult. The child can be ordered. The child can be returned.
So that is the logic of a product, not a person. And once a child is a product, “quality control” always follows. And so a weak heart becomes a reason to send him back.
What God Says About the Child in the Womb
Scripture does not leave us guessing. King David wrote:
For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them. (Psalm 139:13–16, ESV)
Look closely. David says God is the one who “knitted” him together. Not a lab. Not a contract. God. And notice the timing: God saw David’s “unformed substance” and had already written his days—before David had done a single thing, healthy or sick, useful or weak.
So the baby in Texas was fearfully and wonderfully made. A failing heart did not lower his worth by one inch. And every child conceived in a lab is still knit together by God, still loved by God, still an image-bearer we must welcome and guard. The child is never the problem. Turning the child into a product is.
But Wouldn’t That Baby Rather Exist?
Here is the strongest argument on the other side, and we should say it plainly. The columnist argues that without surrogacy, Benson’s daughter would not exist at all. So the real choice, she says, is between a loving home and never being born. Who could argue against a child getting to live?
We can hold two truths at once. Yes—once a child exists, that child is precious, full stop, no matter how he or she was conceived. We welcome that child with joy. But “the baby turned out fine” does not make the means right. By that logic, any act that produces a baby is excused by the baby. Scripture never reasons that way. God can bring a treasured life out of a broken situation without blessing the situation that caused it. The gift is holy. Still, that does not make every path to the gift holy.
“Conservative” Is Not Enough
Some Christians said so out loud this week. Author Megan Basham wrote that there is nothing conservative about deliberately creating motherless children. Children’s-rights advocate Katy Faust has argued for years that a child has a right to his own mother and father, and should never be bought and sold. They are right.
Here is the deeper point. You can defend free markets and small government all day long. But if you will not conserve the created order—mother, father, child, the body, the womb—you are not conserving much at all. A movement that guards the market while discarding the mother has lost the plot.
Why This Should Wake Up Virginia
Surrogacy is not on our ballot this November. But the worldview underneath it is. The same idea—that grown adults may define life, marriage, and the body however they please—is exactly what Virginians will weigh when we vote on marriage and on life. How we see the child in the womb, and the mother who carries him, is not a far-off debate. It is a choice set right in front of us.
The Author of Life Has the Last Word
So do not put your hope in a headline, an election, or a court. Put it where David put his—in the God who knits every child together in secret and writes their days before they draw a breath. He is sovereign over the surrogate in Texas, over the baby in Dallas, over the columnist at her keyboard, and over you.
Our task is not to win a culture war by our own strength. It is to tell the truth in love, to welcome every child as a gift, and to trust the Author of life with the rest. A child is not a product. He is a person—known, formed, and named by God long before we ever saw his face.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the official position of the Virginia Christian Alliance. This piece is offered as commentary and encouragement for Christ’s church, in the hope that it will be read—and debated—with grace and truth toward all. [Replace with canonical VCA disclaimer + civility note before publishing.]
Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Sources: reporting from CBS News, ABC News, and Global News on the Texas surrogacy case; Guy Benson’s public announcement and the ensuing USA Today column by Ingrid Jacques; commentary highlighted on Albert Mohler’s The Briefing (August 19, 2026).
