I'm not interested in refereeing the ongoing conservative identity wars happening online right now. Every week, someone is declared "not a real conservative," someone else is excommunicated from the movement, and a dozen factions argue over which alliances are permissible in the fight against the progressive left.
That debate has its place. But it's not the point here.
What Dave Rubin expressed in the resurfaced excerpt from Don't Burn This Book isn't wrong because of coalition-building or political branding. It's wrong because it violates something far deeper and far older than any contemporary ideological label.
Discussing his and his "husband's" surrogacy, Rubin wrote:
More than a handful of conservatives reacted with understandable indignation:
Set aside the outrage for a minute and let's look at what Rubin actually said - and why the moral reasoning behind it collapses under its own contradictions.
First, note that Rubin openly acknowledges that a fertilized embryo is alive:
If it wasn't ‘alive,' why would we be putting a fertilized egg into the surrogate in the first place?
This is an important admission: The child he and his partner paid to conceive is already a living human being. Yet he immediately pivots to defending abortion, and even to personally justifying the termination of a child diagnosed with disabilities:
If early on we could detect such abnormalities, we decided that we would terminate the pregnancy.
Here's the problem: Once you acknowledge a child is alive, the only remaining question is whether that life is valuable. Rubin answers that question not with a moral principle, but with a calculation. Can the child live independently? Will caring for them burden the family? Will this life be "fully realized" (a phrase never defined, but easily filled with cultural biases about productivity and perfection)?
This is not a moral framework. It's utilitarianism.
It treats children not as gifts but as products - beings whose worth is determined by their performance, their convenience, and whether they match the specifications of the adults who ordered them. Rubin's own analogy makes the point more clearly than any critic could. As Hans Fiene pointed out, his argument is structurally identical to a man who sends back a meal at a restaurant:
Rubin's reasoning is fatally conflicted because he is trying to uphold two incompatible moral instincts at once:
The intuitive belief that human life has inherent value.
The secular ethic that value is assigned by desire, convenience, and autonomy.
This is yet another moment when Christianity proves itself a far sturdier platform upon which to stand.
The Christian worldview holds that human beings possess dignity not because of their capabilities, but because we bear the image of our Creator (Genesis 1:27). Your worth is not measured by usefulness, independence, or potential. It is bestowed, not earned.
That means the child with disabilities is not less human.
The child with limitations is not less valuable.
The child who will never live independently is not less endowed with God's image.
Rubin's dilemma is what happens when a person builds their identity on a framework that requires treating life as a purchasable commodity. When reproduction is technologically engineered and commercially transacted, it is almost unavoidable to start thinking in commercial categories: cost, preference, product quality, return policies. None of this makes Rubin a monster. It simply reveals that he has been discipled by a worldview that reduces human life to a contract rather than a calling.
Christians should respond to Rubin - not with rage, but with clarity. His argument isn't dangerous because it is uniquely wicked. It is dangerous because it is increasingly normal. Once we exchange the truth of God for a lie (Romans 1:25), and life becomes something we make rather than something we receive (Acts 17:28), the door to eugenics creaks open through a hundred small, seemingly "reasonable" steps.
The Christian story insists on something better:
That children are not products, but persons.
That suffering does not erase value.
That weakness is not undignified.
That every life — planned or unplanned, typical or disabled, wanted or unwanted — is a life God calls precious.
Rubin is right that embryos are alive. The question is whether they matter.
Christians know the answer was decided long before any of us could calculate it.
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Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Not the Bee or any of its affiliates.
