There’s a glaring gap between what Waters professes—that a woman’s highest calling is the home—and what she does, which is support her family financially while being way more influential and successful than her husband. She reconciles this by, literally, doing it all, while swearing she will slow down her career at a moment’s notice. By that same token, it’s also hard to distinguish between what Waters really thinks, what she is supposed to say, what’s rage-bait, and if there’s any meaningful difference between those categories. Her X background used to be a photo of “What’s Wrong With ‘Equal Rights’ for Women?” by Phyllis Schlafly, an activist who started speeches by thanking her husband for allowing her to be there. When I ask her about it, Waters says, “If your enemies think you’re oppressed, play up the trope.”
On the right, optics are everything. “How you project yourself is a political message,” Waters says. Before coming to DC, she had eight piercings, including belly button and eyebrow rings, but she didn’t want to be perceived like that. “Your appearance shows what you value,” she says. “I really value dressing well and pleasing my husband.”
If Waters had her way, there might be some IVF, but it wouldn’t involve ranking, destroying, or indefinitely freezing embryos. The only lawful surrogacy would be altruistic for heterosexual married couples with a documented history of infertility. (The gays, singles, and AOCs of the world would, in other words, put children’s well-being first and just not have them.)
In an international context, some of Waters’ views are perfectly normal. Almost every wealthy country besides the US bans elective sex selection. Every other wealthy country bans commercial surrogacy, which the UN called a form of violence against women and “the sale of children.” UN committees see anonymous gamete donation as incompatible with children’s rights. Most Western countries require tests to undergo some kind of approval process before going to market, so polygenic tests are out. In Germany, parents need government approval to genetically test embryos. Through a global lens, American Big Fertility is bizarro.
But for Democrats, it’s often seen as too politically toxic to criticize the largely unregulated industry. Challenging almost anything about it—even just that private-equity-backed clinics conduct most IVF cycles—opens the door for critics like Waters. Businesses have framed picking the sex of your baby, or even picking your Aryan-est baby, as a matter of “reproductive autonomy” on par with abortion. Lefties who disagree mostly keep their mouths shut. It’s almost too easy for Waters. Google will send anyone disturbed by the status quo straight to her op-eds.
While Waters invites journalists to her home and cooks them elaborate meals, some fertility professionals blame the reporters who dissect the scandals. After I wrote about a surrogacy gone wrong last year, Ron Poole-Dayan, the executive director of Men Having Babies, told me, “You are the problem. Journalists like you are a big part of the reason gay men can’t have families.”