“The Handmaid’s Tale” was not intended as porn, just sayin’.

I would like to point out to Ross Douthat that, those nice wealthy couples who are so desperate for healthy (and white!) newborns to adopt? Yeah, some of them are gay. Sometimes, famous wealthy gay guys like to get married, and sometimes they also want kids, and that’s going to be part of the demand for those children whom Ross is so terribly distressed to say are not in such generous supply as they used to be. Now that contraception is available, abortion is legal, and single motherhood is not the life-ruiner that it once was, and therefore vulnerable women can no longer be tied down and forced to bear children for better-off families, Ross would have us believe that it’s so, so very unfair that well-off infertile couples have to wait for the babies they want. If only we selfish not-rich single young (and white) women would give up our birth control and abortion rights, then there would be plenty of healthy (and white) newborns for rich couples to choose from, and wouldn’t that be so much better? (Say nothing about all the brown babies in the system; no one gives a shit about them.)

Oddly enough, I don’t see new parents like Elton John or Melanie Thernstrom wailing and gnashing their teeth about how this cruel world of reproductive freedom unfairly denies them the steady stream of adoptable children their ancestors could choose from. If they need to find women who are (this is the part that Douthat finds offensive) willing to sign up to give birth to their children, with all the waiting, expense and risks of disappointment that it takes to become a parent through surrogacy, then they…buckle down and make it work. Douthat seems to think such people are treated unfairly, though I’m sure families like Elton John’s are not quite what he has in mind. They seem to be a mite too busy enjoying their kids to rail against the selfishness of women who keep their wombs to themselves.

You know, I’m starting to think that Douthat actually enjoys being the pro-choice blogosphere’s favorite fish in a barrel. There is so much wrongness in his new column that I won’t even try to address all of it. Amanda Marcotte has been generous enough to do that for us. I’m just pointing out to the under-control-of-fertility crowd, that some of those surplus babies they want us selfish women to be forced to create? Would go to gay couples. That tends to be the place where the “family values” movement isn’t so concerned about how many kids need families.