Surrogacy Needs More Regulation (Duh!)

A reproductive law specialist in California, a state at the center of the surrogacy market, has pleaded guilty in federal court on fraud charges. In the process of running a baby factory in Ukraine, she duped at least twelve couples out of $150,000 for babies they thought they were adopting legally. She also misled parents into thinking they were using anonymous sperm and egg donors. The case raises issues (again) about whether surrogates should be paid. Because California attracts people from across the world seeking to adopt through surrogate pregnancies, the state’s courts have made landmark surrogacy rulings. Case (literally) in point: a 1998 law suit in which a couple in the process of having a child by a surrogate divorced. Most of us think of surrogates keeping babies as the big risk with surrogacy, but actually it’s more common for the adoptive parents to walk away, leaving the surrogate with an unwanted child. In the 1998 suit the father claimed the baby wasn’t his since he had no biological connection to the child, but the court ruled that a married couple intending to procreate through such arrangements are the child’s lawful parents. The international trade in surrogacy and sperm donation is growing, and so is the potential for more exploitation--of surrogates; of couples seeking babies; and most of all, the babies.