Richard Dur is the volunteer Executive Director of Prolife Alberta and an award-winning political consultant with experience on campaigns across Canada.The ultrasound technician grew quiet. The room seemed to hold its breath.Measurements were repeated. More images were captured. The physician was called in. There appeared to be a cleft lip. Other abnormalities too, perhaps. More testing would be needed.At first, no one spoke of abortion. There were specialists to consult. More scans to schedule. More tests to perform. Every consultation ended with the same fragile reassurance: wait and see. The conversations that had once revolved around names, nurseries, and due dates slowly gave way to probabilities, prognoses, and percentages. The diagnosis gradually eclipsed the child in the conversations of those surrounding him.But the child himself remained unchanged. The child she carried remained the same child she had carried the day before, and every morning she still rested a hand on the place where the child stretched beneath her ribs. The communication between the once-eager parents and the woman, reduced to the role of a human incubator, changed. The emails became colder. The conversations shorter. Then, finally, one order emerged above all the others: Terminate the pregnancy. .Nothing about the child had changed. He still possessed the same beating heart. The same tiny hands. The same humanity.Only one thing had changed: he no longer resembled the child they thought they had ordered.Yet the assumptions revealed by this case extend beyond the parties involved. They force us to ask a more fundamental question: What is a child? Children are not products. They are not accessories meant to complete a family portrait, nor bespoke creations to be accepted only if they satisfy the specifications of those who “commissioned their conception.” They are not there to fulfil us, though they often do. They do not exist for our benefit, though we may be immeasurably blessed by them. They are human beings, each possessing an inherent dignity that belongs to them by virtue of their humanity, not by virtue of being “wanted.” Each is a human person in his or her own right.It is this understanding of the child that makes surrogacy morally significant.Surrogacy raises questions far deeper than contracts or compensation. It reduces children to the terms of an agreement to be satisfied, rather than gifts to be received. Gifts, by their very nature, cannot be demanded, specified, or guaranteed. The moment they become subject to expectation and performance, they cease to be gifts at all..How we answer that question shapes not only how we understand surrogacy, but also how we speak about and understand abortion itself.Those who ordinarily speak with fierce conviction about bodily autonomy and reproductive freedom have had surprisingly little to say about a woman resisting pressure to undergo an abortion she did not want. Why? Is it because acknowledging the reality of coerced abortion would require admitting that abortion itself can become the means by which others exercise control over a woman?That the slogan "my body, my choice" is not always defended when the choice is to continue the pregnancy? Or is it something deeper than inconsistency? Would acknowledging this woman’s refusal require conceding that there are, at least in some circumstances, moral reasons not to abort? If so, the implications extend far beyond surrogacy. They challenge not merely a contract, but assumptions about autonomy, choice, and the nature of the unborn child. The child remains. Long after the contracts expire. Long after the court filings have been forgotten. Long after the slogans have faded. The child remains.Richard Dur is the volunteer Executive Director of Prolife Alberta and an award-winning political consultant with experience on campaigns across Canada.
