When Kim Cotton gave birth to a baby girl in England five years ago, she made national 9eadlines. Now there's a law in the United Kingdom against doing what she did.

What Cotton did was allow an agency to make money by arranging for her to be a surrogate mother for an infertile couple.

The case prompted a tidal wave of negative publicity in England. Headlines blasted "rent-a-womb" arrangements, and within six months, Parliament had passed a law forbidding any brokerage's or agency's receiving money for arranging a surrogate pregnancy.

The law, passed in June, 1985, allows infertile couples to pay a surrogate to carry their child but bans profit-making by any other party.

Cotton, 34, a Londoner who has a 10-year-old and a 14-year-old of her own, is now one of England's leading voices for surrogate parenting. During a trip to Orange County recently, she reflected on the need to make surrogation available and to regulate it so no one gets hurt.

"You can't just outlaw it," Cotton said. "People in this age won't accept childlessness. There is the technology to help them, and there is all this feeling; people want to be parents. You can't just say no. That will just drive it underground."

"Surrogacy can be extremely hazardous," Cotton said. "There are many pitfalls, because you're dealing with emotions and with desperate people. Unregulated, it can be disastrous. . . ."

Although some states have banned surrogation, California has not, and surrogation arrangements are increasingly popular here. Few have been tested in court, but efforts to criminalize surrogation as well as those to legalize and regulate it persist in the state Legislature.

Orange County recently attracted nationwide attention when local resident Anna L. Johnson sued to keep the baby she is carrying for another couple, even though she has no genetic connection to the fetus.

The Beverly Hills-based Center for Surrogate Parenting, the leading arranger of surrogate births in California, has found that most of its surrogate mothers are from Orange County, said Ralph Fagen, co-director of the center. They are generally 27- or 28-year-old married women with two children and median family incomes of $30,000, who want to do something important for a childless couple, he said.

"The typical surrogate has a more traditional background and lifestyle, more conservative values, so we tend to find her in Orange County," Fagen said. "She's someone you'd find at the PTA meeting. . . ."