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Legislative Approaches to Surrogate Motherhood

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 April 2021

R. Alta Charo
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Extract

By the beginning of 1988, nearly six hundred babies had been born through surrogate mothering arrangements. Although there have been a number of lawsuits concerning custody or challenging adoption laws that appear to prohibit payments to surrogates, the majority of surrogacy arrangements proceed without judicial involvement. Nevertheless, surrogate mothering has engendered considerable activity in state legislatures, as well as two bills in Congress to ban the practice (H.R.2433 and H.R. 3264) and hearings by the House Committee on Energy and Commerce and the Subcommittee on Transportation, Tourism, and Hazardous Wastes. Most recently, the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) released a report, Infertility: Medical and Social Choices. That report included the results of a survey of surrogate-mother matching services active in the United States in late 1987.

Type
Legislation
Information
Law, Medicine and Healthcare , Volume 16 , Issue 1-2 , Spring 1988 , pp. 96 - 112
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics 1988

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