“I felt like it was such a transactional experience,” Khloe Kardashian said on Season 3 of The Kardashians. “It’s not about [the baby]. I wish someone was honest about surrogacy and the difference of it.”
Whether it is gestational surrogacy — in which the surrogate has no genetic relationship to the child — or traditional surrogacy, the practice is severely unregulated. Surrogacy produces over 3,000 births annually and is not subject to any strict federal laws. All regulation resides with the states and is implemented through contracts drafted by lawyers who help intended parents and surrogates agree on matters such as parental rights, surrogate compensation, and the relationship between the surrogate and child after birth.
While surrogacy has enabled many couples to become parents, including women for whom pregnancy would be medically dangerous, the vast majority of American surrogacies are performed commercially — meaning that women are compensated anywhere from $10,000 to $60,000 for carrying another couple’s baby. The media have described these women as having “wombs for hire.” And it is true that surrogates may sign contracts that restrict vital rights, including the right to refuse an abortion requested by the intended parents.
State laws differ vastly on this practice nationwide, placing surrogate mothers and babies in jeopardy.
In Nevada, couples do not even have to be married to have a child via surrogacy. States such as California do not have residency requirements, which has allowed many international couples to acquire babies who are then born as U.S. citizens. There are multiple instances in which same-sex parents were both named on the birth certificate of their U.S.-citizen surrogate baby without ever having lived in America.
Surrogacy is not an issue that can be left at the state level. Couples should not have the luxury of moving only one state over to avoid strict laws. Certain aspects of surrogacy must be broadly prohibited because people should not be able to order American citizens on demand or force a surrogate mother to terminate her pregnancy. Federal law should establish eligibility requirements and safeguards designed to protect both surrogate mothers and children.
The horror stories of surrogacy are not rare. One same-sex Canadian couple realized that their baby had brain defects and offered to pay their U.S. surrogate $10,000 to have an abortion. When she refused and gave the baby up for adoption, they sued her for $600,000 in emotional damages.
Another couple separated while their surrogate was pregnant, leaving the surrogate, the intended parents, and the unborn child entangled in custody battles during the following months.
IN FOCUS — THE ETHICS OF SURROGACY: CHILDREN ARE NOT A TRANSACTION
Surrogacy simply needs strict federal regulation. Since it deals with the children of generations to come, implementing sound laws that ban international U.S. surrogacies and protect surrogate mothers is vital to this nation’s future.
Surrogacy will not magically rediscover the ethical limits it has surpassed and adhere to them. So we must.