What do you do with a defective product? Return it. What about when the product is a baby? Because babies are harder to “return,” one couple decided to abort the baby after becoming concerned that the “product” would not be up to their standards.
The Daily Mail shared the story of Marty and Melinda Rangers, an American couple who had two children via surrogate mothers. As the article reveals, Marty and Melinda also had a third child through a surrogate, but they opted to terminate the contract — and terminate the baby’s life along with it.
Because of “busy careers,” the Rangerses put off having children. After early retirement and a move out of the country, they did not think medical resources were reliable enough to try in-vitro fertilization, a reproductive technology that could increase the likelihood of conception in the waning years of fertility. Instead, they opted to have an embryo transferred to a surrogate.
The surrogacy industry is largely unregulated, a veritable Wild West of business ethics and human moral standards, as the Rangerses soon discovered. They went through an agency in California and interviewed a potential surrogate who “seemed reliable on paper and good to talk to over the phone.” The surrogate then underwent a psychological and medical screening, after which she began to carry Marty and Melinda’s child.
Excited at the prospect of their child being born and deeply financially invested (Marty and Melinda say the surrogacy costs about $100,000 — “$30,000 going to the agency,
