Incubaters' Intifada

"We very much have seen an impact from the conflict between Israel and Palestine, with how these clients are being affected here in Canada."

"There are surrogates who feel that carrying for an Israeli would be supporting genocide ... [but] more frequently than that is the fear of [harm to the parents or baby or reprisals for them]."

Jacki Lebert, CEO, Platinum Surrogacy, Ontario 

 

"Lately, I don't have any [surrogates] that will consider it at all."

"They feel it's a genocide or they say it's too much religion. They don't like seeing innocent women and children being killed over there."

"They say things like, 'I don't want a child to grow up in a war zone -- missiles bombs, suicide attacks'."

Sally Rhoads-Heinrich, agency head, Surrogacy in Canada

 

"When it was first presented to me ... it was more about comments calling Israelis murderers and not wanting to bring the next generation of murderers into the world, and that's what I found devastating."

"It was making a decision about an entire group of people."

 "They're [Israeli clients] very upset about it. They feel judged, they feel discriminated against."

"[Clients] said this is a feeling they have about how Israelis are perceived around the world right now, how everyone hates them."

Sara Cohen, fertility lawyer

 

"I fully understand that it's not the general population of Israel's [sic] fault for this abhorrent war."

"But the idea of a child that I birthed growing up in an active war zone is just too anxiety-inducing."

Surrogate statement

Fertility lawyer Sara Cohen at her Toronto offices, Friday November 8, 2024.  Photo by Peter J. Thompson/National Post /Postmedia

 

 Third-party parenting is having its 'ceasefire' moment. Two surrogacy agencies in Canada reveal that the surrogate staff appear unanimous in declining to 'work' with any of their once-Israeli clients. The reasons, however they've stated, to skirt around the issues, are quoted as objecting to the Israeli 'invasion' of Gaza with the result that according to the Hamas Health Ministry, has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians, mostly women and children. 

 

That the prelude to this 'invasion'-cum defence of Israeli citizens was a monstrously savage true invasion by thousands of Palestinian terrorists on a mission to pillage, maim and murder 1,200 Israelis and capture 250 more as hostages is confined to the realm of inconvenient details.

Some claim not to oppose matching with Israelis as individuals, but feel concern over sending he resulting baby back to a violence-wracked region. Others fear blowback should it become known they were involved in an Israeli baby's gestation. Platinum Surrogacy alone claims up to 100 Israeli clients in any year. For them now, Platinum Surrogacy has become BaseMetal Surrogacy.

When lawyer Cohen, who almost exclusively represents gay men, posted a lamenting message on Instagram about the situation, she received some expected responses: "Typical Zionists -- entitled to other people's land, so why wouldn't they be entitled to other people's wombs?" One surrogate said: "It's not a war, it's a genocide".

Another surrogate asking her name not be published stated "I would just prefer to spend my time with a couple where I'm not seeing expressly negative things in the media. You see videos of children parentless, or parents crying over injured children ... That really creates a bias I wish I didn't have, but it's there".

Surrogacy in Canada online

 

Yes, it is; one thing can be said about Palestinians; they've mastered the arcane art of public relations manipulation. Another thing that can be said with conviction, given the state of affairs on Canada's streets with never-ending displays of Palestinian pro-Hamas championing; the viral antisemitism that has pervaded Canada and other Western countries with corrupted messaging that produces a one-sided version of events certainly ignores the existential threat that Israel is facing surrounded by hostile Muslim attitudes toward usurping Jewish self-entitlement to their ancestral lands that Islam consecrated to itself.

Additionally, the unquestioning eagerness with which Canadians swallow whole the version of events that eclipse reality by a wide margin is testament to the underlying antisemitism that is part of any society and always has been, regrettably. In a war, people die. Wars erupt generally speaking when one belligerent threatens another and no option is open but defence.

In Israel's case, its entire existence has been one of defence against violent offensive measures by combined regional military powers, or by an Islamist terror-supporting theocracy pulling the strings of their puppet militias to attack and to aspire to mass murder of Israelis. In the case of Hamas, following the October 7, 2023 atrocities, spokespeople announced the Hamas intention to conduct as many October 7s as it would take to destroy Israel. What country wouldn't respond to that by taking the initiative to destroy those that would destroy them?

 

Bedroom in southern Israel where a toddler was murdered by Hamas terrorists