Shane Dawson and Ryland Adams’ Use of Surrogacy Showcases the Practice’s Grotesqueness

This article originally appeared in The American Spectator on December 12, 2023, and was republished with permission.

Guest post by Ellie Gardey

YouTubers Shane Dawson and Ryland Adams announced the birth of their sons, Jet and Max, on Sunday. Dawson is the biological father to one of the boys, while Adams is the biological father to the other. The mother of the children — whom they called “the egg donor” — is unknown. A separate woman carried and gave birth to the children for payment. To attain the sperm to create the children, Dawson and Adams each masturbated alone in a clinical room that offered them pornographic magazines and videos as well as a chair covered in plastic. As part of the process, an additional 10 embryos were created and subsequently cast aside — and possibly killed — in favor of the implantation of Jet and Max, who were described as “optimal” embryos.

The situation highlights the terrible evils of surrogacy and in vitro fertilization. Jet and Max are deprived of knowing their mother and have been birthed by a woman whose care for them begins and ends with her ability to make money off of them. Ten other children were created only to be killed, used for research, or frozen because they were not considered “optimal.” Further, Dawson and Adams presumably paid well over $100,000 to create these children — a circumstance that treats Jet, Max, and the 10 other children as paid-for products in the two’s highfalutin lifestyle.

Dawson and Adams chronicled the entirety of the surrogacy process on Adams’ YouTube channel. This included everything from filming the room in which they masturbated to create their children to a video titled “WE’RE PREGNANT!!!!!! Seeing Our Twins For The First Time!”

In one YouTube video, the pair discusses their decision to implant Jet and Max — and not one of the other 10 children — into their “surrogate.” Adams related that Dawson told a fertility clinic representative over the phone, “I guess we’ll just do a boy of each.” Dawson then explained that choice to the camera. “It just makes sense,” he said, “because number one, they’re not gonna be identical because there’s two different dads, but, wow, drama! Two different baby daddies!” The two explained that they had simply texted their “surrogate” to ask her if she was okay with carrying twins.

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— The Redheaded libertarian (@TRHLofficial) December 13, 2023

The use of the children for profit and attention continued after their births. Dawson posted a 10-picture slideshow of the children on Instagram. In one image, Adams lies in a hospital bed looking exhausted — imitative of a mother who has just given birth. That particular image was reminiscent of one in which Pete and Chasten Buttigieg held their children — who were also born by a “surrogate” — while lying in a hospital bed.

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Dawson wrote in the Instagram post, “We probably won’t be showing much of them in the future,” but the couple’s treatment of the children’s creation and gestation as a form of entertainment for their audiences over the past year suggests they may not follow through on that idea.

The use of surrogacy and in vitro fertilization is rapidly gaining traction. In 2022, the global surrogacy industry was valued at over $14 billion. The industry is predicted to experience 25 percent compound annual growth over the next decade to make it a $129 billion industry by 2032. In 2021, 413,000 in vitro fertilization cycles took place in the United States, from which 97,128 children were born.

However, those aren’t the only children involved in the process, as 12–15 embryos are typically produced in each in vitro treatment. E. Christian Brugger of the National Catholic Register recently calculated that this conservatively means that “more than two and a half million human beings” were “either killed or frozen in a single year in our country to fuel this sordid industry.” Fertility clinics, Brugger concluded, “are places of unspeakable evil, arguably worse than abortion facilities.”

The mass killing of embryos created through this process is, without a doubt, the worst aspect of in vitro fertilization and surrogacy. But the selling and buying of eggs, sperm, and women’s bodies — and the commodification of children, who are purposefully deprived of their biological parents — ought to awaken even pro-abortion advocates to their evils.

In the case of Shane Dawson and Ryland Adams, the issue of Dawson’s deeply problematic history also raises concern. He once said on a podcast: “Why is it that when someone Googles ‘naked baby’ on the internet and jerks off to it they can get arrested? I don’t understand that.” He also once posted a video in which he pretended to masturbate while looking at a picture of an 11-year-old.

Dawson’s past led many to criticize the two’s newfound fatherhood. “im shocked they allowed him to have a child,” said one person on X. “Someone call child protective services,” said another. “I need CPS at their doorsteps IMMEDIATELY, like who even allowed this?” added another user.

Hopefully, public awareness of Dawson’s past will incite people to take a closer look at the evils of surrogacy.

Copyright 2023 The American Spectator