Again, I don’t know how any thoughtful, ethical person could question the outcome in this case. Apparently the “intended parents” refused to agree that they would seek appropriate medical care for the child after he was born with a serious but medically correctable heart problem. Having been unsuccessful in their efforts to have the child aborted late term, these ghouls were going to get custody of the child and perhaps have a hospital administer “palliative care”…that is, let the baby die. Pleasantly, of course,
A legal battle, at least regarding the life of the child, was averted when the child was born ahead of the September 3 due date.
As with some of the other cases discussed in Part 1, how could a typical pro-abortion advocate who uses the standard pro-abortion rhetoric about women’s “bodily autonomy” argue that the parents could force the surrogate to undergo an abortion? Yet abortion activists are apparently immune to integrity, logic, and decency. The main thing is to get the unborn child disposed of.
The surrogate’s contract contained a clause obligating her to submit to an abortion if the “intended parents” demanded it. The lawyers who drafted that contract should be sued for legal malpractice, and there are arguable ethical violations as well. I am wondering how common such contracts are, and how often they are enforced. For human beings cannot sell themselves into slavery or otherwise contract away their “unalienable rights.” That contract provision is unenforceable as against public policy, and should be made illegal by statute.
Republicans should pass the bill in the House and make Democrats show their lack decency when they vote it down.
Yesterday, an ugly abortion controversy was resolved by the birth of “Baby Gabriel.” Here the legal/ethical gray areas involving hired surrogate mothers and the legal/ethical not-quite-so-gray areas regarding legal abortion mated to create a monster.
Upon learning that the baby gestating in their surrogate’s womb was not perfect (the unborn boy had a congenital heart defect), a California couple decided to exercise a provision in the surrogacy contract and force the mother-by-proxy to undergo an abortion. Instead, the surrogate fled to Texas, where abortion is illegal. Thanks in part to the intervention of Texas AG Ken Paxton (who is running for governor), the baby in question was born. Now there is a dispute over who gets custody. The birth mother has decided she wants the child anti-abortion activists have named “Gabriel.” The couple that wanted to have him killed wants him too.
Guess which I would choose, were I the infant.
I’ll examine that mess in Part II, but ahead, from the EA archives, is the last post Ethics Alarms had regarding the generally messy ethics issue of surrogate motherhood, from 2016, Pre-Unethical Conditions: Surrogate Mother Contracts And Making Babies With Jerks…
“I think that, you know, during lockdown, of course, rhetoric in that time is not rhetoric that we would use today.”
—-Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) in her cynical and ominous reply to ABC News anchor Jonathan Karl after he asked how Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate Francesca Hong would “get around” her past radical and unpopular positions on abolishing policing among others.
Later, she said, laughing, “I have a local city councilman that has this saying, ‘Woke 1 was crazy.'”
[A quick digression before the commentary starts. Ten years ago, I swore off using deliberately unflattering photos of public figures, especially Hillary Clinton, as unfair and akin to ad hominem attacks. I recognize that I broke from that pledge regarding Joe Biden, primarily because the mainstream media was unethically protecting him from public scrutiny of his galloping dementia, and photos like this one…
…conveyed important information. I will now officially declare that AOC will be another exception to that EA policy. She is a silly, light-weight, unethical Dunning-Kruger victim, yet the Axis keeps claiming she is charismatic and “cute.” Ignorance and dishonesty are not cute. The woman is a dangerous fool, and photos like the one above help clarify that.]
Digression over. Now, regarding that quote… the two quotes, in fact.
The main quote above, though the Axis of Unethical Conduct is working mightily to spin it, is a deceitfully worded admission that AOC and her ideological allies are now prepared to disavow their intentions and beliefs as expressed openly during the peak of The Great Stupid, highlighted by the duel afflictions of the George Floyd Freakout and the Wuhan Virus Ethics Train Wreck, because it is no longer politically expedient to reveal those intentions. So now they intend to lie.
The big story on CNN and MSNOW this morning is that Democratic-Socialist Francesca Hong lost the Democratic primary for Governor in Wisconsin. CNN is relieved, MSNOW is kind of sad. Meanwhile, Fox News wants to focus on the WNBA, because everything about it makes progressives, women, blacks, lesbians, and supporters of trans-males look terrible.
You can see the results above: Hong conceded a bit before 95% of the votes had been counted. Ann Althouse finds that susp…interesting. The Wisconsin bloggress observes,
“Why did Hong concede so quickly, with such a narrow margin? Why not wait at least until all the votes are in? Why not ask for a recount? She’s entitled to a recount if the margin is 1% or less, but it’s only paid for by the state if it’s less than 0.25%. To drag out the process after the primary would help Tiffany. That’s good reason not to indulge in a recount, but why not wait until all 100% of the votes are counted? She conceded when it was less than 95%.”
There is certainly a lot to trigger conspiracy theorists about this result. The winner, David Crowley, the black Milwaukee County executive, barely eked out a victory after his candidacy was resurrected late in the campaign. Democrats decided that Hong couldn’t win the general election, so Gov. Tony Evers (D), who had pledged to stay out of the race to replace him, became active in the effort to beat Hong. In July, Crowley had dropped out of the race, saying that it was “clear that I will not be the Democratic nominee for governor.” Then Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez, who was the leading “establishment” candidate left, dropped out of the race.
Crowley was being pressured to re-run, and said he was praying for guidance. His wife asked for a “sign”that her husband should rejoin the race: if she saw a red bird, her husband should jump back in to the primary. I’m not kidding, unfortunately. She said she did see a red bird, and so 10 days after quitting, he spouse was in the race again. This is how seriously American take democracy in 2021. Who would vote for a candidate for governor who makes decisions like that? Not me. I’d rather vote for the bird.
I have two simple questions for pro-abortion (or perhaps “pro mothers and doctors being able to kill viable infants at will” is a more accurate label…a bit long, I admit) advocates.
How can you honestly and sincerely defend the new Massachusetts abortion law? If you can, how do you look yourself in the mirror or sleep at night?
Abortion will now be allowed at any time before birth in Massachusetts after Governor Maura Healey (D, or course: what other party would do this?) eliminated the state’s abortion limits yesterday. Previously, the Bay State had allowed abortion only up until 24 weeks. Now a fully developed unborn infant can be killed any time during the 40-week gestation cycle, even second before birth. That means that the child could be delivered via C-section and instantly be protected by law as a living human being, but an unborn infant at the exact same state of development and fully viable can be murdered in the womb after the mother’s water has broken and contractions have begun.
To be fair, now, the home of my birth and happy childhood isn’t the only barbaric state with such an immoral law. Alaska, Colorado, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Vermont, and the District of Columbia of course, also believe that being able to kill living and viable infants in the womb is a human “right.” Peter Singer, the Princeton ethics professor, once caused an uproar when he said that as long as we were allowing abortions up to birth, why not let the mother see her baby first after it is born and then have the option to kill it? He was right: morally and ethically, either homicide is exactly the same. The distinction between born and unborn at that point is arbitrary and a legal fiction, created to let mothers feel better about a monstrous act.
Here is how National Public Radio reported those statistics on D.C. crime on the one-year anniversary of President Trump ordering the National Guard to patrol the National Capital.
“Multiple studies have since found that the National Guard presence in D.C. has had no effect on violent crime, although there has been a decrease in opportunistic crimes like petty theft and vehicle break-ins.”
When I read that [Aside: NPR had the gall to send me a solicitation for a contribution via email, signed by the NPR host who blackballed me as its ethics commentator for telling the truth about late-hit sexual harassment complaints, because I “seemed to be defending Donald Trump.] this morning I was genuinely puzzled. When I surfed past Fox News last night, Laura Ingraham was declaring that the statistics proved that Trump’s use of the National Guard was prudent and has been a great success. Two completely divergent news reports. This is why our journalism has become untrustworthy and dangerous. This is why civil discourse is nearly impossible, with citizens operating under competing distortions of reality.
And this is why President Trump was and is right to call our news media “enemies of the people.”
However, NPR’s distortion and deceit qualifies the network as a media Ethics Villain and an Ethics Corrupter. Note the chart above from the D.C. police site. A 32% decrease in murder is not “no effect” on violent crime. That isn’t just spin or bias, that’s a lie. NPR also plays language games, because that’s the Left’s specialty. “Opportunistic crimes like petty theft and vehicle break-ins” is the euphemism this nauseating excuse for a news organization uses to describe the following crimes that have decreased significantly in the past year in the District:
Gates is one of the contract film reviewers on Roger Ebert.com, a website I find slightly unethical for the same reason I regarded the Sirius-XM Sixties Channel running old tapes of the Wolfman Jack radio show unethical. The Wolfman was long dead ( the show did not make that clear), and Roger Ebert died in 2013, but the website he once issued reviews from has continued to use his name to make readers think what appears there is, like Ebert was, perceptive and competent. As Gates’s bitter review proves, that is a misrepresentation.
As every other review and the trailer seem to indicate,“One Night Only” is a standard issue romantic comedy with a contrived set-up. Never mind: Gates decided to use her film review as a platform to spew pure partisan bile. Political bias tainting reviews is a long held target for me: the 20-year run of my professional theater company was a constant victim of it because the Washington Post reviews dismissed almost all of our productions of classic American works as insufficiently supportive of 21st century progressive values. I particularly recall our revival of Gore Vidal’s political satire “The Best Man” being panned because the concept that a Presidential candidate’s “private sexual conduct” was relevant to his fitness to be POTUS was absurdly “dated.”
Guess who was President at the time?
Pauline Kael of the New Yorker soaked her otherwise astute reviews with her leftist bias. For example, she panned every John Wayne movie because he was too conservative for her. To be fair, she was one of my earliest introductions to New York City liberal media group-think. Kael wrote that she was shocked when George McGovern lost to Nixon in 1972 because she knew literally no one who wasn’t voting for the Democrat. (George lost in a landslide.)
As the silly reviews for “The Odyssey” recently demonstrated, reviewers reading politics into films that have nothing to do with politics is obnoxious and unprofessional, but Marya Gates is under the misapprehension that she has the standing and intellect to use her reviews to rant about politics like a smug, Trump Deranged college sophomore majoring in Critical Race Theory.
I just left my hot cup of French Roast coffee and a Tastycake downstairs because a comment to the post “On Abdul El-Sayed” ruined my morning.
Somehow, I left out “except Richard Nixon” in the paragraph that was supposed to note that every U.S. President except Obama and Nixon had blue eyes. I don’t know how that happened: I thought I had written it. But while the comment, from a good friend, should have offered a correction (as is, sadly, often necessary especially when I write one late at night), instead the commenter accused me of being racist. The eyes bit was mentioned in a section about American leadership templates, which, while I might have written it slightly differently has it been mid-day and I were a bit fresher, I stand by it nonetheless Here’s the corrected version:
“Not too long ago, it would be impossible to imagine a serious candidate for the U.S. Senate named Abdul El-Sayed. Americans just didn’t elect people who had non American-sounding names. It was a silly bias, but a comforting one. When I wrote my thesis hypothesizing an American Presidential type, I noted that no American President had been elected who didn’t have an American-sounding name. (No, nobody thought of Dwight Eisenhower as German, for obvious reasons.) Not only that, every American President from Washington to Bush except Richard Nixon has had blue eyes. Barack Obama blew that template to bits, both in name and in eye-color.”
As I wrote just now in a correction prompted by that comment:
“I certainly knew about Nixon’s eyes: there is a controversy over their color: he is stated in some sources as having black eyes, and others call them dark brown. But he and Obama are the only brown-eyed boys: Trump restored the Presidency to its blue-eyed tradition. The Name Game has a chapter in my honors thesis, which was,indeed a controversial one: three chair-holding professors in the Harvard Government Department reviewed it, and couldn’t agree on the grade; eventually they compromised on magna cum laude. The observation about Presidents’ names was not original, and I had it thoroughly footnoted to a historian who specialized in the narrow field of Presidential character. Perhaps today’s DEI, bias-over-reality, conservative thought-suppressing Harvard College would have slapped me down for that section, but then it no longer is a top tier, trustworthy institution.”
I completed the correction this way:
“Fact: the template for the American Presidency in the minds of Americans is powerfully influenced by another fact. Every President before Barack Obama was white, male, born on the mainland and raised by Christians. He changed that mold, and if he had been a good President and better human being, he would have changed it more. I have reached the end of my patience with progressives and Democrats, yes, even Trump-Deranged friends, stooping to race-baiting when they have neither the information, the integrity nor the wit to counter opinions (and facts) they find inconvenient, as they appeal to emotion or worse. I wrote in the reply to an old and cherished friend’s accusation of racism in the comments to this post, ‘Shame on you.’ Shame on all of them.”
Abdul El-Sayed speaks during a news conference at the Spirit of Detroit shortly after winning the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate in Michigan, Wednesday, Aug. 5, 2026, in Detroit. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)
Democraic-Socialist, also anti-Semite, Abdul El-Sayed defeated Rep. Haley Stevens in the Democrat Senate primary last week. This is remarkable for many reasons, few of them good. I have waited this long to post about it because I have been trying to keep my gorge down.
1. Not too long ago, it would be impossible to imagine a serious candidate for the U.S. Senate named Abdul El-Sayed. Americans just didn’t elect people who had non American-sounding names. It was a silly bias, but a comforting one. When I wrote my thesis hypothesizing an American Presidential type, I noted that no American President had been elected who didn’t have an American-sounding name. (No, nobody thought of Dwight Eisenhower as German, for obvious reasons.) Not only that, every American President from Washington to Bush except Richard Nixon has had blue eyes. Barack Obama blew that template to bits, both in name and in eye-color.
[Notice of Correction:Somehow, I left out “except Richard Nixon.” I don’t know how that happened: I thought I had written that. Well, it was too late I guess: I finished the post at one in the morning. But I certainly knew about Nixon’s eyes: there is a controversy over their color: he is stated in some sources as having black eyes, and others have them as dark brown. But he and Obama are the only brown-eyed boys: Trump restored the Presidency to its blue-eyed tradition.I apologize for the error, but a commenter who should know better accused me of being “racist” for #1 above. To be blunt, that pisses me off. The Name Game has a chapter in my honors thesis, which was,indeed a controversial one: three chair-holding professors in the Harvard Government Department reviewed it, and couldn’t agree on the grade; eventually they compromised on magna cum laude. The observation about Presidents’ names was not original, and I had it thoroughly footnoted to a historian who specialized in the narrow field of Presidential character. Perhaps today’s DEI, bias-over-reality, conservative thought-suppressing Harvard College would have slapped me down for that section, but then it no longer is a top tier, trustworthy institution. Fact: the template for the American Presidency in the minds of Americans is powerfully influenced another fact. Every President before Barack Obama was white, male, born on the mainland and raised by Christians. He changed that mold, and if he had been a good President and better human being, he would have changed it more.
I have reached the end of my patience with progressives and Democrats, yes, even Trump-Deranged friends, stooping to race-baiting when they have neither the information, the integrity nor the wit to counter opinions (and facts) they find inconvenient, as they appeal to emotion or worse. I wrote in the reply to an old and cherished friend’s accusation of racism in the comments to this post, “Shame on you.” Shame on all of them.]
In retrospect, I have concluded that Obama was not (and is not) a cultural American. Abdul El-Sayed being the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senator in Michigan would be impossible without Obama’s toxic influence.
2. Abdul El-Sayed is by far the most radical and repellent candidate to emerge from the primaries yet. He makes Graham Platner look like Hans Christian Anderson. Hassan Piker ‘s pal** pledged support for the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood in a 2011 article on HuffPo titled “Why the U.S. Should Support the Protesters in Egypt” in which El-Sayed argued for allowing the terrorist organization to grab control of Egypt. He campaigned with Amir Makled, who praised the terrorist group Hezbollah and Iran. He wants to end U.S. military aid to Israel, which he says is committing genocide in Gaza.
As far as state matters go, the aspiring Senator supports raising taxes on working-class Michiganders including waitresses, delivery drivers, and senior citizens receiving Social Security to pay for his “Medicare for All” agenda item. He supports defunding the police, saying on social media that “The police have become standing armies we deploy against our own people” and that police funding is influenced by “systemic racism.” Naturally he advocates abolishing I.C.E., aka. “open borders.”
He has never held elective office.
3. So how did this guy win a primary in rock-ribbed American Michigan? Thank higher education indoctrination. The vote was close, just 1% separating the candidates with the margin of victory coming from college towns and Gen Z. El-Sayed didn’t win a single district dominated by voters without college degrees, supposedly the “working class” that crypto-Commies like El-Sayed claim to be standing up for.
4. About that margin of victory: pre-vote polls had El-Sayed crushing the incumbent. Lesson: our pollsters are still biased, incompetent, and untrustworthy, and most are loyal members of the Axis of Unethical Conduct.
Is it really so hard for officials in the Womens National Basketball Association to come clean and admit “Of course we don’t think males who just decided one day “POOF! We’re females!” should play against women in sports. We were just virtue-signaling to knee-jerk progressives and we don’t want to publicly agree with anything the Trump Administration supports. That would put the WNBA out of business!”?
Apparently. Now the league looks like silly bunch of hypocrites and woke morons, which it is. Permit me to mock and excoriate them.
White, 35, a Republican candidate for US Senate, announced, “I’m transgender! I’m a woman… I identify as sometimes identifying as a woman for purposes of… professional basketball,” to Fox News. “I think I’d be unstoppable,” White continued, tongue sort-of in his metaphorical cheek. “But I’m a team-first guy. I’m a pass-first kind of player. I do the little things. I led my team in all five major stat categories at Iowa State University, so I do a little bit of everything. I’ll do whatever the coach needs me to do. I’ll do whatever the girls need me to do.”
Freedom, in his own “POOF!” moment, had been all technical and stuff, which is no fun. He said he had reviewed the WNBA’s eligibility criteria, and and that he meets all the requirements. Article XIII of the WNBA’s 2026 collective bargaining agreement says, “Only players who are women are eligible to play in the WNBA,” but the 409-page document diesn’t define “women” and has no policy on transgender eligibility, including never stating whether self-identification alone is sufficient sufficient to make everyone call a player “she” or “they” and allow the biological male to change in WNBA locker rooms and smash the girls on the court.
Royce took the pass and scored. The WNBA just has to be honest about the absurdity of biological men playing in women’s sports, Royce said. “I think the WNBA could come out and make a definitive statement about guys with a pair of balls playing in the Women’s Association,” he said. His plan: he is serious about wanting to be drafted and will proceed until the WNBA’s leadership stops trying avoid throbbing reality.
If he isn’t drafted, Royce says, he vows, he’ll sue. “I have to file a discrimination lawsuit, right? I mean, that’s, that’s ridiculous,” he told the Fox New. “We’re gonna have to have a huge legal battle about discrimination if I can’t play.”
Gotcha!
The WNBA only ethical and practical option now is to admit it, but its pusillanimous leadership doesn’t have the integrity, intelligence, courage and respect for the public to do it. Instead, it released a rare example of official “huminahumina.”
“I know many of you have received questions in recent weeks regarding transgender athlete participation in women’s basketball, and I expect this topic will continue to receive significant attention. I wanted to reach out to share how we are approaching these conversations at the league office and to thank those of you who have responded to questions from the media with thoughtfulness and professionalism. [The WNBA will] always approach this topic thoughtfully, respectfully, and in alignment with the longstanding values of our league. Second, our player eligibility rules, unlike the eligibility rules of some other leagues and governing bodies, are collectively bargained. Lastly, preserving the integrity of our game and ensuring fair competition will always remain among the league’s highest priorities. We recognize that this is a complex and nuanced topic, and we will continue to have important conversations with all of you and the Players Association in the weeks and months aheadWe also plan to convene additional discussions and offer listening sessions for any team leaders who would like to participate. Your perspectives and feedback are invaluable, and I appreciate those who have already reached out to share their thoughts.”
Ramalama ding-dong! The statement means absolutely nothing. Ralph Kramden’s famous “huminahumina” is actually more articulate. It isn’t a complex or nuanced topic at all, and Engelbert’s league epitomizes why, as Royce and Freedom make crystal clear. If males can be female just by deciding that they are, the WNBA is toast. If men can’t do it, boys can’t do it. She is defaulting to the infamous but ancient tactic of avoiding an inevitable conclusion with unpleasant ramifications (like admitting that people she hates are right, and obviously so) by calling for “discussions” when there isn’t anything to discuss other than “How the hell do we get out of this?”
Players who have responded to questions from the media with thoughtfulness and professionalism number exactly two: Caitlin Clarke, who said she didn’t want to talk about it, and the now iconic Sophie Cunningham, who has repeated her opposition to biological males playing against women in all sports because it is unfair, dangerous and stupid. The rest, if they said anything at all, echoed Indiana Fever coach Stephanie White, who blathered that she didn’t have the scientific background to have an opinion on the issue. Minnesota Lynx coach Cheryl Reeve said earlier this month, fatuously,”We need to protect trans kids. To me, it’s a human rights issue. Every kid has a right to sports.”
Are you willing to let biological men squash your female players flat to “protect trans kids,” you idiot? Are you willing to wipe out women’s basketball and sacrifice girls to protect them? Do you think before you speak?
The WNBA players union also resorted to self-contradictory gibberish:
“We embrace justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion .Those are the values that unite this Union and allow it to protect women’s sports while creating transformational change. Hate, abuse, and demonization of any person or group of people, including transgender people, only fuel fear, division, and harm. We will continue to have hard conversations. But we will not be used as political pawns.”
Translation: “We embrace slogans that keep us aligned with the radical progressive bubble, but have no interest in living up to them when they are adverse to our own self-interest. We know we can’t simultaneously protect women’s sports and allow trans-women top dominate them, but we’re hoping the public is so stupid that they won’t see the obvious hypocrisy in our rhetoric. As with the rest of the ideological Left, we’re going to attack the messengers who carry the facts that reveal our absence of integrity, and hope it works for as long as possible. We trying the “pawns” analogy because it distracts from reality, which is that we leaped into this hopeless cause to signal our virtue, and made the WNBA combatants on the losing side of one of the Left’s dumbest obsessions.”
Popcorn popped, as the saying goeth. I can’t wait to see how the WNBA tries to extricate itself from its self-made mess.
Ethics Alarms 