The buying and selling of human babies has gone unnoticed by federal policymakers for too long, but that may soon change. In the past three months, the subject has generated several stories that reveal an alarming level of political neglect. It was discovered that a man on the sex offender registry purchased a baby in Pennsylvania, two children bought through surrogacy were discovered in a cage in San Francisco, and 21 other children bought through surrogacy were found in just one home in Los Angeles after doctors called police because a baby was taken to the emergency room with intracranial bleeding.
Proponents of Big Surrogacy argue that it is no different and equally beneficial as adoption. This could not be more wrong. Adoption meets some of the needs of children who have already been born, who, for whatever sad reason, are separated from their mothers. Surrogacy is about creating babies to meet the desires of adults. These desires require the separation of mother and child, which in all other circumstances is understood to be something best prevented for the good of the child, the mother, and society in general. Recent surrogacy horror stories are not aberrations in an otherwise benevolent industry; they are the logical conclusion of the commodification of human beings.
Since the Supreme Court created a federal right to same-sex marriages in 2015, the commercial surrogacy industry has boomed from a couple of hundred million dollars to more than $4 billion. Pictures of gay couples holding infants to their chests are now commonly circulated on social media. But behind those pictures is a denial of the intense connection between mother and child.
Babies develop preferential responses to maternal scents and sounds while still in the womb, and these persist after birth. Studies show that removing babies from their mothers causes stress in mother and baby, creating long-term problems. The desire of adults to have children is understandable, but the government should not facilitate a freewheeling industry that knowingly inflicts harm on mother and child.
The federal government recognizes the problem of separating mother and infant in the puppy breeding industry — which also happens to be worth $4 billion, which is why the Animal Welfare Act makes it illegal for dog breeders to separate them in the first eight weeks of the puppies’ lives. But the government has so far chosen to see no evil in the wild west of the human surrogacy industry. There is no such regulation. It is obviously absurd for federal law to concern itself with the protection of dogs but not people.
Defenders of the surrogacy industry frame the issue as a simple contract for service. A couple pays a young woman for her time and labor the same way they pay a maid to clean their house. But surrogacy is so much more than that. It is common for the buyers of babies to stipulate in their contract that the mother must terminate her child if she is caught using drugs or alcohol. Such forced abortions have happened.
Then there is the question of what happens if a mother changes her mind and wants to keep her baby. A surrogate did this in the Los Angeles case mentioned above. What happens? The mother is taken to court and forced to deliver on the contract. She is forced to hand over her child. California enforces contracts for the purchase of a baby.
HOUSE REPUBLICANS PASS RULE CHALLENGING SUPREME COURT RULING
No state court should enforce contracts for the buying and selling of humans. We ended the ownership of people in this country more than a century and a half ago. At a bare minimum, Congress should ban the removal of babies from their mothers in commercial transactions in the first eight weeks of the baby’s life.
Congress should do more. It should ban the enforcement of contracts that involve the buying of human babies. A child is not property but a person with rights. It is again time that the government should treat them that way.