Ban commercial surrogacy
by Katy Faust · The Washington TimesOPINION:
Three recent surrogacy stories made headlines within two weeks. In each one, it was the woman with no genetic tie to the baby who fought to keep the child alive.
On July 14, the New York Post reported that a same-sex couple in Ontario is suing their surrogate for $600,000 after she refused to abort the 22-week-old baby they commissioned when an ultrasound revealed a cleft lip and minor heart defect. Their contract allowed termination for fetal “abnormality.”
Further testing found no genetic disorder, only conditions correctable by surgery. The baby survived and remains in the couple’s custody. The men are now suing the surrogate for their own “emotional distress.”
Eight days later, the Wall Street Journal detailed the story of a Florida surrogate who carried triplets for a single man in China. When he repeatedly failed to retrieve the babies and instead sent strangers to collect them, the surrogate refused to hand them over. After one infant died from respiratory complications, she paid for his funeral herself and gave him her own last name in his obituary.
Earlier this month, Live Action reported on McKenna West, an Alaskan surrogate who refused to abort a baby diagnosed with hypoplastic left heart syndrome (HLHS) after the commissioning couple requested termination over concerns about “quality of life.”
Ms. West, whose due date is early next month, located a hospital with an exceptional surgical success rate and traveled there to save the baby after he is delivered. She is now fighting for custody and expects that if she loses, the couple will allow the child to die upon delivery.
Three contracts. Three intended parents who sought abortion or failed to protect the children they commissioned. Three birth mothers who refused to let that happen.
Splicing “mother” into three women
Advertisement Advertisement
These cases reveal that the “gestational carrier” isn’t merely an “oven” for someone else’s “bun” or an “extreme babysitter.”
Surrogacy splices what should be one woman — a mother — into three: a genetic mother, a birth mother who lays the foundation of bonding and attachment and a social mother who provides daily maternal love. None is optional for the child. When these qualities aren’t found in the same woman, the child experiences loss.
In all three of these cases, it was the birth mother who stood in the gap because she alone was physically connected to the child.
Ignore that bond and you don’t get “family building.” You get babies whose lives depend on the one relationship that surrogacy insists is disposable.
A bond money can’t buy or eliminate
Advertisement Advertisement
A newborn can identify their mother’s scent within two days of life and distinguish it from every other woman’s. Skin-to-skin contact with the birth mom lowers a baby’s cortisol reactivity and stabilizes their stress response in ways other adults can’t replicate. Her voice, heartbeat and touch help regulate the child as he learns emotional regulation.
Fertility clinics build detachment recommendations into their surrogate counseling. One surrogacy website offers counseling for the surrogate who may find it “emotionally challenging” to let go of the baby. Another agency encourages support for the surrogate in “managing [her] emotional attachment.”
That counseling is itself an admission. Women bond with the babies they carry.
All three surrogates had lives outside these pregnancies. Yet they bonded deeply enough to resist lawsuits, seek specialized medical care, fight custody battles and even pay for a baby’s funeral.
Advertisement Advertisement
Now consider the baby. The surrogate had countless relationships. The baby had exactly one.
Before birth, the child knew nothing of intended parents, genetic donors or legal contracts. The baby knew only the woman whose heartbeat, voice and body sustained them for nine months.
If a fully formed adult cannot simply walk away from that relationship, why do we assume a newborn can?
Surrogacy is always an injustice
Advertisement Advertisement
We rightly recognize mother loss as a tragedy when it occurs through death, foster care or medical necessity. We work to preserve or restore that relationship because we understand its importance. Surrogacy deliberately creates that same loss — not because tragedy made it unavoidable, but because adults contracted for it.
These three cases aren’t a regulation failure. They are products of it. Each arrangement was legal in well-regulated jurisdictions. Better contracts cannot change the central reality that surrogacy intentionally separates children from the women who carried them.
If our aim is genuine child protection, the only true solution is a global ban on commercial surrogacy, regardless of who is purchasing the child.
Money didn’t protect these babies. Contracts didn’t protect them. Genetics didn’t protect them. Their birth mothers did.
Advertisement Advertisement
• Katy Faust is the founder and president of Them Before Us and spokeswoman for the Greater Than campaign.