From my favorite blogger comes this.

"Welcome to modern life. Introducing kids as commodities:

The man bringing together this disparate group is Rudy Rupak, chief executive of PlanetHospital.com LLC, a California company that searches the globe to find the components for its business line. The business, in this case, is creating babies"

"PlanetHospital’s most affordable package, the “India bundle,” buys an egg donor, four embryo transfers into four separate surrogate mothers, room and board for the surrogate, and a car and driver for the parents-to-be when they travel to India to pick up the baby.

Pricier packages add services like splitting eggs from the same donor to fertilize with different sperm, so children of gay couples can share a genetic mother. In Panama, twins cost an extra $5,000; for another $6,500 you can choose a child’s gender.

The couple made payments as the pregnancy progressed, with the final amount due at birth. Of the $35,000, PlanetHospital keeps around $3,600. Another $5,000 goes to the egg donor, plus another $3,000 or so for travel expenses. The surrogate gets $8,000. The rest, around $15,000, is paid to the clinic.

Packages. For human beings. If you’re not sick yet, this should just about close the deal for you.

“Our ethics are agnostic,” Mr. Rupak says. “How do you prevent a pedophile from having a baby? If they’re a pedophile then I will leave that to the U.S. government to decide, not me.”"

"Mike Aki and his husband, a Massachusetts couple, confronted this question. The couple planned on having two children. But their two surrogate mothers in India each became pregnant with twins.

At 12 weeks into the pregnancies, Mr. Aki and his husband decided to abort two of the fetuses, one from each woman. It was a very painful call to make, Mr. Aki says. “You start thinking to yourself, ‘Oh, my god, am I killing this child?’”"

He didn’t think of his decision as an abortion, but as a “reduction,” he says.


Read more.

Does anyone remember those hellish sci-fi works about people factories? Yeah, well it isn't science fiction anymore, it's our evil reality.

Pike Memorial was blessedly Christian

As I live in Greymouth and I know men who work at Pike my family attended the memorial service for the men lost at Pike. I was praying that rain wouldn't come and I think that would go for everyone here on the Coast, thankfully the weather was perfect. The thing that impressed me most was how obviously and publicly Christian the service was. Jesus Christ was talked about with no apologetic embarrassment. The service was led by Anglican minister Rev. Tim Mora, who did my husband's grandmother's funeral in his little church in Cobden a few years ago. Our parish priest Fr. John Morrison said a prayer and our church choir sang.

I'm not a Coaster by birth (my husband is), but I know many of the people personally including Peter Whittal. He is a man I trust and I know how hard he is working and the toll it is taking on him and his family. Seeing thousands coming together to pray and mourn was a special experience and I truly believe that the West Coast is a slice of Eden.

But it isn't Eden from before the Fall. There is danger  and pain here. My husband's family worked at Strongman Mine during the disaster in 1967 and Pike has brought back memories and grief for his family. In the end suffering can bring about good if we let it turn us back to hope and faith in God. Rev. Tim spoke about the deaths at Pike being a tragic accident and not willed by God. It wasn't those men's time, it was just a terrible, horrible accident. He also said that Jesus understands our loss, he too wept for his dead friend.

Greymouth will keep on keeping on and we won't forget the men who lost their lives deep in Pike River Mine and we will hold them in our prayers.