The home is a divine institution (Gen. 2:18-24; Matt. 19:4-6). God established marriage as the relationship in which human reproduction is to occur. Children are to be brought into the world by a father and mother who are married to each other and are committed to caring for their children together.

Modern man has little regard for God's arrangement. Through artificial insemination, mothers are having children by men to whom they are not married and with whom they have no intention of rearing their children. This is contrary to God's plan. When a woman, through artificial means, has a child by some man other than her own husband, perhaps the term "mechanized adultery" is applicable.- Whether that terminology is in order or not, the practice is sinful.

When the Mother Keeps the Child

Sometimes the mother keeps the child for herself. She is married, but her husband is unable to father a child, so she is impregnated by donor sperm from a sperm bank. Or she may not be married, but wants a child, so by-passing God's arrangement for having children, she receives donor sperm.

In either case, sin is involved. Fathers have responsibilities to their children (Eph. 6:4; 1 Tim. 5:8), but the fathers of these children do nothing toward fulfilling their responsibilities as fathers. Usually, they do not even know who the mother is. It is difficult to understand how a man who has donated his sperm to a sperm bank could sleep at night, knowing that he has a child somewhere whom he knows nothing about. He does not know his child's circumstances or needs, but he knows that he is doing nothing for his own child. To father a child he has no intention of caring for is sinful; it makes him worse than an infidel (1 Tim. 5:8). A Christian cannot have any part in wickedness.

When the Mother Sells the Child

Sometimes a married woman is unable to have a child, so the husband fathers a child by another woman, who receives his sperm by artificial insemination. This woman is the mother of the child, but she has arranged to seel her child to the couple for several thousand dollars. She is called a "surrogate mother."

The practice stinks to high heaven. A woman has a responsibility to love her children (Tit. 2:4). One who is able to care for her child, but instead sells her child to others, surely is not acting as a loving mother.

People in our society are often rewarded for unusual abilities. Athletes, for example, are paid high salaries for their rare athletic abilities. Similarly, surrogate mothers are paid well for an unusual ability they possess: the abnormal ability to reject their own flesh and blood.

There has been a court case involving a woman who thought she had that ability, but was not as lacking in natural affection (Rom. 1:31) as she thought. She signed a contract to have a child by another woman's husband and then sell that child to the father and his wife. But after carrying her child within her body for nine months, she found it too difficult to reject the child. Consequently, there was a court battle over who would get the child - the father and his wife or the mother and her husband.

Such problems are inevitable when two people have children together while they are married to others. If two people have not formed a home with the intention of rearing their child together, they have no business having a child. When they do have a child, God's plan is violated; and when men violate God's plan, there are sure to be complications.

Guardian of Truth XXXI: 16, p. 501
August 20, 1987