surrogate mother

1. A woman who bears a child for another person, often for pay, either through artificial insemination or by carrying until birth another woman's surgically implanted fertilized egg.
2. One that acts as, serves as, or is a mother substitute.

For more information on surrogate motherhood, visit Britannica.com.

Surrogate Motherhood is the process by which a woman bears a child for another couple, typically an infertile couple. There are two kinds of surrogate motherhood. In traditional surrogacy, the mother is artificially inseminated with sperm from the father or with sperm from a donor, if the father is infertile. In gestational surrogacy, sperm is taken from the father (or from a donor) and the egg is taken from the mother, fertilization happens in vitro, and the embryos are then implanted into the surrogate mother's uterus. Thus, the surrogate mother is not genetically related to the child.

For over one hundred years artificial insemination was used as a way of managing male infertility that kept the family intact and allowed children to be born to a married couple. Artificial insemination was generally kept secret. Couples did not tell friends, family, or the children themselves that donor sperm was used, thus maintaining the fiction of biological paternity.

Though stories of surrogate motherhood, often with familial surrogates, date back two thousand years, in 1976 the lawyer Noel Keane arranged the first formal agreement between a couple and a surrogate mother in the United States. The marketing of "surrogacy" developed as a solution to female infertility. Brokers entered the scene, hiring women to become pregnant via artificial insemination with the sperm of the husband of the infertile woman. In 1986 surrogacy came to national attention with the case of "Baby M." In this case, the woman hired as a surrogate, Mary Beth Whitehead, later refused to relinquish the child. After a protracted court battle, in which Whitehead's parental rights were stripped and then replaced, the hiring couple won custody of the baby, but Whitehead remained the legal mother with visitation rights.

Since the 1980s, advances in technology have increased the use of gestational surrogacy. As it has become more common, there has been an increase in the number of Latin American, Asian American, and African American surrogates.

The Center for Surrogate Parenting (CSP) estimates a cost of $56,525 for traditional surrogacy, in which artificial insemination is used, and a cost of $69,325 if another woman's egg is used. Approximately $15,000 of these fees are paid to the surrogate herself for the time and sacrifice of the pregnancy. When surrogacy agreements first surfaced in the mid-1970s, there was no payment for surrogate motherhood, and it tended to involve middle-class and blue-collar couples, with friends and sisters helping each other. Once payment became the norm, the demographic changed: "the majority of the couples remain largely upper-middle-class people, whereas the majority of the surrogates are working class women" (Ragoné, Surrogate Motherhood, p. 194).

In 2002, most states had no specific laws regarding surrogate motherhood. While many states do not uphold surrogacy contracts, all states recognize birth certificates and adoption certificates from other states, making surrogate services available to anyone with the money to hire them.

That surrogacy has become a business has not meant that contracting couples do not value the surrogate or that the surrogate does not care about the child or the couple. Very careful screening—approximately 95 percent of potential surrogates are rejected—ensures that situations similar to that of Mary Beth Whitehead do not happen. Surrogates are chosen for their commitment. In the only ethnographic study of surrogacy, Helena Ragoné found that couples adopted one of two strategies in dealing with their surrogate. "Egalitarians" wanted to maintain a relationship with the surrogate mother and did not see her as a means to an end. Since in all of Ragoné's cases the children were still quite young, it is difficult to know how this would play out. "Pragmatists" simply dropped the relationship with the surrogate, taking the child as theirs, and considering the payment sufficient acknowledgement of the role of the surrogate.

Bibliography

Ragoné, Helena. Surrogate Motherhood: Conception in the Heart. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1994.

Rothman, Barbara Katz. Recreating Motherhood: Ideology and Technology in a Patriarchal Society. New York, Norton, 1989.

A relationship in which one woman bears and gives birth to a child for a person or a couple who then adopts or takes legal custody of the child; also called mothering by proxy.

In surrogate motherhood, one woman acts as a surrogate, or replacement, mother for another woman, sometimes called the intended mother, who either cannot produce fertile eggs or cannot carry a pregnancy through to birth, or term.

Surrogate mothering can be accomplished in a number of ways. Most often, the husband's sperm is implanted in the surrogate by a procedure called artificial insemination. In this case, the surrogate mother is both the genetic mother and the birth, or gestational mother, of the child. This method of surrogacy is sometimes called traditional surrogacy.

Less often, when the intended mother can produce fertile eggs but cannot carry a child to birth, the intended mother's egg is removed, combined with the husband's or another man's sperm in a process called in vitro fertilization (first performed in the late 1970s), and implanted in the surrogate mother. This method is called gestational surrogacy.

Surrogacy arrangements are categorized as either commercial or altruistic. In commercial surrogacy, the surrogate is paid a fee plus any expenses incurred in her pregnancy. In altruistic surrogacy, the surrogate is paid only for expenses incurred or is not paid at all.

The first recognized surrogate mother arrangement was made in 1976. Between 1976 and 1988, roughly six hundred children were born in the United States to surrogate mothers. Since the late 1980s, surrogacy has been more common: between 1987 and 1992, an estimated five thousand surrogate births occurred in the United States.

The issue of surrogate motherhood came to national attention during the 1980s, with the Baby M case. In 1984 a New Jersey couple, William Stern and Elizabeth Stern, contracted to pay Mary Beth Whitehead $10,000 to be artificially inseminated with William Stern's sperm and carry the resulting child to term. Whitehead decided to keep the child after it was born, refused to receive the $10,000 payment, and fled to Florida. In July 1985, the police arrested Whitehead and returned the child to the Sterns.

In 1987 the New Jersey Superior Court upheld the Stern-Whitehead contract (In re Baby M., 217 N.J. Super. 313, 525 A.2d 1128). The court took all parental and visitation rights away from Whitehead and permitted the Sterns to legally adopt the baby, whom they named Melissa Stern. A year later, the New Jersey Supreme Court reversed much of this decision (In re Baby M., 109 N.J. 396, 537 A.2d 1227). That court declared the contract unenforceable but allowed the Sterns to retain physical custody of the child. The court also restored some of Whitehead's parental rights, including visitation rights, and voided the adoption by the Sterns. Most important, the decision voided all surrogacy contracts on the ground that they conflict with state public policy. However, the court still permitted voluntary surrogacy arrangements.

The Baby M. decision inspired state legislatures around the United States to pass laws regarding surrogate motherhood. Most of those laws prohibit or strictly limit surrogacy arrangements. Michigan responded first, making it a felony to arrange surrogate mother contracts for money and imposing a $50,000 fine and five years' imprisonment as punishment for the offense (37 Mich. Comp. Laws § 722.859). Florida, Louisiana, Nebraska, and Kentucky enacted similar legislation, and Arkansas and Nevada passed laws permitting surrogacy contracts under judicial regulation.

In 1989 the American Bar Association (ABA) drafted two alternative model laws involving surrogate motherhood. These laws are not binding but are intended to guide states as they formulate their own laws. One legalizes the practice of surrogate motherhood and makes surrogacy contracts enforceable in court; the other bars the enforcement of contracts in which a surrogate mother is paid to have a child and then give up any claim to the child.

Under either ABA model, states legalizing surrogate contracts limit them to agreements between a surrogate mother and a married couple. A genetic link must be established between the couple and the child, by the husband's supplying sperm or the wife's contributing an egg, or both. To be valid, the contract must be approved by a judge before conception takes place, and it must be accompanied by proof that the wife is unable to bear a child. The surrogate mother has the right to repudiate the contract up to 180 days after conception, in which case she may keep the child. If she does not repudiate the contract during that time, the couple becomes the child's legal parents 180 days after conception.

In 1993 the California Supreme Court issued a landmark ruling declaring surrogacy contracts legal in California. The case, Johnson v. Calvert, 5 Cal. 4th 84, 19 Cal. Rptr. 2d 494, 851 P.2d 776, involved a surrogacy contract between a married couple, Mark Calvert and Crispina Calvert, and Anna L. Johnson. Crispina Calvert was unable to bear children. In 1990 the Calverts and Johnson signed a surrogacy contract in which the Calverts agreed to pay Johnson $10,000 to carry an embryo created from the Calverts' ovum and sperm. Disagreements ensued, and later that year, Johnson became the first surrogate mother to seek custody of a child to whom she was not genetically related.

After the child's birth, the Calverts were awarded custody. Johnson appealed the decision. The state supreme court finally upheld the legality of surrogacy contracts under both the state and federal constitutions. The court held such contracts valid whether or not the surrogate mother provides the egg. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear Johnson's appeal.

In many states, surrogacy contracts are considered unenforceable because of existing adoption laws designed to discourage "baby selling." These laws may, for example, forbid any consent to adoption given prior to the birth of the child. They may also make it illegal for a birth mother to receive payment for consenting to give up a child or for an intermediary or broker to receive a fee for arranging an adoption. In states with these laws, a surrogate mother who wishes to keep the child rather than give it up for adoption may successfully challenge an already established surrogacy contract.

Laws concerning artificial insemination can also conflict with surrogacy agreements. Some states have laws maintaining that semen donors are not legally the fathers of children created with their sperm. These laws were originally designed to facilitate the development of sperm banks. In a surrogacy arrangement, they conflict with an attempt to adopt the surrogate child. Increasingly, states are drafting laws that clarify the legal status of surrogacy arrangements, including who is the rightful parent of a child born through surrogate mothering.

By 1995 nineteen states had adopted laws regarding surrogate motherhood. Most of these are designed to prevent or discourage surrogacy. Arizona, the District of Columbia, Kentucky, and Utah all have complete bans on surrogacy. Thirteen states bar the enforcement of paid surrogacy contracts. Ten jurisdictions prohibit a third party, such as a lawyer or physician, from collecting compensation for arranging surrogacy agreements.

State laws differ in the way they handle disputes over custody. Surrogacy laws in Michigan and Washington make custody determinations on a case-by-case basis, attempting to reach the decision that best serves the interests of the child. In New Hampshire and Virginia, such laws presume that the contracting couple are the legal parents, but give the surrogate a period of time to change her mind. In North Dakota and Arizona, the surrogate and her husband are the legal parents of the child.

Arkansas, Florida, and Nevada are the only states that allow surrogacy contracts. These states permit the intended parents named in the contract to be the legal parents. In Florida and Nevada, the surrogacy laws apply only to gestational surrogacy, where the egg used is not the surrogate's.

See: Adoption; Child Custody; Family Law; Parent and Child.