Child Protective Services recently removed two six-year-old boys from an elderly man's home after discovering he kept them in a "human-size cage"— a bathroom, couch, TV, and more surrounded by three regular walls and a fourth wall made of cage bars and a barred door that opens to the descending stairs.
The man called "Raymond" insists the enclosure was not a cage, but a means to protect the boys since one of them is "neurodivergent, throws furious tantrums, and has previously run out of the apartment."
Diane Gramley, president of the American Family Association of Pennsylvania, says the "Wild West" of surrogacy, which is how Raymond became a father, is allowing man to play God, and it needs to be reined in.
"I think it is despicable that a 74-year-old man … from anywhere … was able to basically purchase these embryos and hire a surrogate to carry the embryos in her womb to full term," she responds. "Once they were delivered, they were legally his. This is like … purchasing a commodity."
Bearing in mind that a sex offender in her state used the surrogacy loophole to obtain a baby, she wonders what this man's intentions were.
Regardless, she believes surrogacy laws should be comparable to adoption, preventing child predators and people who are otherwise unfit from becoming parents.
"This 74-year-old man said he didn't realize … what it took to raise children," Gramley relays. "All he had to do was ask a mom."
