Americans using surrogacy to create made-to-order babies

Different regulatory approaches to surrogacy in the US can result in legal tangles, according to a report in The New York Times Magazine. The "lax atmosphere" of surrogacy regulation "means that it is now essentially possible to order up a baby, creating an emerging commercial market for surrogate babies that raises vexing ethical questions."

The Times gives three disturbing examples.

After years of infertility, Amy and Scott Kehoe decided to hire a surrogate. They purchased sperm from an anonymous donor, who is a high-achieving college student and employed a surrogate mother. Their twins were born on July 28.

But the babies are now in the custody of the surrogate mother, Laschell Baker, after she acquired a court order to remove the children from Ms Kehoe’s care. Upon discovering that Ms Kehoe was suffering from a mental illness, Ms Baker feared for the children’s safety. “I couldn’t see living the rest of my life worrying and wondering what had happened, or what if she hadn’t taken her medicine, or what if she relapsed,” Ms Baker told the Times. Baker already has four children of her own, and plans to raise the twins, Bridget and Ethan, with her husband Paul.

Five parties were involved in this transaction: the sperm donor, the egg donor, Ms Baker and the Kehoes -- plus the two middlemen who brokered the sperm and eggs.

Lawyers say that fewer problems arise when there is a genetic link between the prospective parents and the offspring. Very often, gestational surrogacy involves two parents who are able to produce eggs and sperm of their own, but the woman is unable to carry a baby. Most surrogacy arrangements run smoothly, and doctors say that they can be highly fulfilling.

Another case involved an eccentric 60-year-old who engaged a sperm donor, an egg donor, a surrogate mother to produce twin girls. From the moment of the birth there were allegations of neglect and utter incompetence as a parent. He had approached the transaction so carelessly that he has had to fight several attempts to remove the girls from his care.

The third involved a woman who agreed to be a gestational surrogate for her brother and his male partner. The partner donated sperm and the woman carried the child to birth. The trio are now fighting for custody of 3-year-old twin girls. The woman now claims that she is the mother even though she did not supply the eggs for the process.

In the US, there is no centralised authority regulating surrogacy. Although fertility doctors have a financial stake in the process, they basically control the process. California upholds surrogacy agreements, but Michigan doesn't.

George J. Annas, a Boston University bioethicist, said, “This is the main problem with commercialization, seeing children as a consumer product. This is especially true when there is no genetic connection with the child,” he told the Times last week. “It really does treat children like commodities. Like pets.”