Fraud cases raise troubling scenarios

Will Saletan, of the on-line magazine Slate, points out that more is
at stake than money in cases of surrogacy fraud. A number of women are pregnant
with someone elses child, but are not being paid to cover their expenses. Will
some babies be aborted?

Surrogates aren’t mercenaries," he writes. But they do need to be paid for
their sacrifices. With every week that passes, they endure more of pregnancy’s
burdens. They submit to exams, tests, and other procedures. They take on serious
medical risks. They forgo activities that might harm the fetus. They lose the
ability to commute to and work at other jobs. They have bills to pay. At least
one abandoned surrogate says she has received an eviction notice. If you stop
paying your surrogate, she needs to quit and find another job, just like any
other worker. But surrogacy isn’t like any other job. The only way to quit a
pregnancy is to abort it.

Apparently none of the surrogate mothers in these recent cases has aborted
the children they are carrying for their brokers clients. Many "will not be
reimbursed for their out-of-pocket expenses lost wages or even have their
medical bills paid," says a lawyer who is involved in one of the cases, but
"every single one of them has committed to moving forward." But what if they
werent so generous? Its an unsettling thought. ~ Slate, Mar 24

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Michael Cook

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