Surrogate Mothers   by Maria

in Family / Parenting    (submitted 2011-02-08)

Even though the social concept of surrogacy goes all the way back to Babylonian times, only in the past 20 years or so have couples been turning to surrogate mothers to bear their children for them. In some countries, commercially arranged surrogacy is illegal, and in others (like Saudi Arabia) the practice is banned altogether; in some others, it simply is not a legal matter at all.

Wishing To Be Parents

The logic of surrogacy isn't exactly elusive. Couples in which the female turns out to be infertile are faced with several daunting choices. Infant adoptions have a very long waiting list and can be quite expensive as well. The latter point also applies to to fertility clinics, which can prescribe drugs with severe side effects and procedures that require quite the threshold for pain.

Mothers For Hire

Then there are those women who, for their own reasons, do not wish to carry and deliver a baby. They are willing to implant a fertilized egg into another woman's body, and have that woman undergo pre-natal care and labor. As one would expect, the birth mother is financially rewarded for her physical and emotional troubles, not to mention profound changes to her finances and lifestyle. After the baby is born, she is expected to get out of the picture entirely.

In the United States, surrogate motherhood and physical custody of the child is a matter of settled case law, after the 1986 "Baby M" case brought the issue to a legal head. The courts found that although the surrogate mother was in fact the legal mother, and that the court found the surrogacy contract to be invalid, that it was still in the best interests of the child (Melissa Stern) to be raised by the biological father and his wife. It remains a controversial court decision 25 years later.

About the Author

Maria is a journalist and single mother. She frequents a related mom website to help with the not so easy day to day events that arise from being a mom.