Читать книгу The Twenty-Third Century: Nontraditional Love онлайн

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First of all, would the nurse agree to have roughly twenty boys calling her Mama? (For the record, nurses retire at the age of forty-five, and they usually bring forth no more than twenty boys during their career.) Second, more importantly, lawsuits may be brought against the surrogate mother if the parents divorce, or if one of the spouses dies. This is what the opponents of innovation fear the most. They insist that scheming lawyers in the future will use any loophole to bring material damages against the nurses. Their opinion is shared by the surrogate mothers’ trade union – a powerful organization with which no political party wants to risk a quarrel before the presidential elections.

Until the case is decided, Victor has no Mama. He has one – Helen – but for his own good, he must not know about this for the time being. In the best-case scenario, when he grows up, they will tell him that Helen is his surrogate mother.

Victor’s problems began from childhood. The traditional rules of upbringing state that children who have not reached sexual maturity are supposed to sleep in the same bed with their parents at least three times per week. According to textbooks on child psychology, “sleeping in the same bed with their parents subconsciously implants the habits of normal sexual behavior in children.” The physicians’ recommendations allow people to avoid tragedies like the one that occurred with Liza Conde’s family.