Womb for Rent?

TAKE a sperm donor, add an egg donor, mix in appropriate lab conditions and rent a womb for nine months. That’s the recipe for a surrogate baby.

Surrogate motherhood has been a controversial practice ever since the widely-publicized "Baby M" case in 1986. That's when surrogate mother Mary Beth Whitehead fought an unsuccessful court battle for custody of the child she was paid to bear for another couple. Since then, a quiet and fundamental change has swept through the business known as "commercial surrogacy." Unlike Mary Beth Whitehead, most surrogate mothers today are not genetically related to the children they carry. That fact may increase both the number of babies born this way and the legal security of the arrangements.

Surrogacy by gestational carrier is simpler in some ways since the surrogate has no genetic link to the child. Surrogate parenthood involves expensive procedures but it is now entirely medically viable. The money that's being used when you are working toward a surrogacy arrangement isn't purchasing a child. Since no surrender of parental rights is necessary, payment for the services of a surrogate would not be in exchange for surrendering parental rights. That makes it an option for wealthy people with fertility problems and no desire, for whatever reasons, to adopt.

In the US there is no national policy regarding surrogacy. Each state has come up with their own legal approach to this relatively new method of procreation. The laws vary from making surrogacy contracts enforceable to criminalizing all forms of commercial surrogacy. In general many of the laws have been the result of cases which have gone to court which has left judges to essentially write the laws with each ruling. Those laws usually are designed to protect women from exploitation and tend not to hold genetic fathers in the same regard as birth mothers. The cases shaping laws today tend to address the issue of whether a contract can be binding can a woman sign a contract regarding custody of a child not yet conceived with informed consent, can payment be made to a woman for her reproductive services but not the final product of a surrogacy? These questions are legally and morally baffling at best and so while legislature tries to keep up with the ever changing reproductive needs of its citizens many states are left with laws which require parents to adopt their own genetic child and other such actions which at first glance seem to make little sense.

The concept of commercial surrogacy may make you uneasy. But in an ideal case, everybody concerned is happy. And, if surrogacy is a de facto industry, it needs safeguards to protect its workers, like any other industry. It needs standard, enforceable employment contracts. Otherwise, there is room for abuse and unhappiness. Above all, the best interests of the child should be the paramount issue in any surrogacy legislation and resulting surrogacy arrangement.

Ref: http://www.everythingsurrogacy.com/cgi-bin/main.cgi?Laws#general