A gay couple is suing a fertility business in California because they had a daughter instead of a son. The lawsuit is full of loaded terms we shouldn’t miss. Gay couples “must” pay surrogate mothers if they want to have kids, the suit says. The men paid the clinic to create “their” embryos and to implant only male embryos into “their” gestational carrier. 

  Must two men, who’ve chosen a biologically sterile union, demand children at will? Who exactly owns a young embryo or a gestational carrier—which is another word for mother? 

  At the end of the day, this distasteful story isn’t a bug of assisted reproduction: It’s a feature. Treating women and children as objects is the enterprise. If we are uncomfortable when someone is more upfront about that—like a couple who files a lawsuit because they didn’t receive what they had ordered and paid for—maybe we should reconsider turning procreation into a manufacturing business.