Surrogacy

The emotional and legal hazards of surrogate motherhood contracts will be on display in Orange County Superior Court again today, three months after surrogate Anna M. Johnson lost her bid to keep the baby she bore for an infertile couple. Now comes Moschetta vs. Moschetta, in which an estranged husband and wife are fighting for custody of a 7-month-old baby born to a surrogate mother but handed over to the couple at birth.

Your story on surrogate motherhood identifying Hagar as an early example should have followed up with the results of that surrogacy ("Surrogate Motherhood: a Wrenching Test of Ethics," Nov. 18). After Ishmael's birth, there was conflict between Sarah and Hagar. Sarah beat Hagar and Hagar fled until commanded by the Lord to return. Ishmael, the son of Hagar and Abraham, did not become a part of Sarah's family as he was taken away by Hagar and became the progenitor of the Arab tribes.

In ruling that a surrogate mother has no parental right to an infant she bears for genetic parents through in-vitro fertilization, Superior Court Judge Richard N. Parslow Jr. called on the California Legislature to clear up questions in the law: "I have some suggestions for the Legislature, briefly. They can do as they see fit. They are better equipped to deal with this sort of problem, I think, than the courts. . . .

The editorial missed the main issue: Should surrogacy contracts be legal? And should the state protect us from the truth surrounding our birth and progenitors? Surrogacy usually necessitates an adoption. Adoption experts have been publishing repudiations of their previous support for not only the secrecy mandated in the "adoption option" but the necessity for adoption itself since we now know that adoptees represent an alarmingly high ratio in psychiatric therapy in most psychiatric facilities.

In the year since the New Jersey Supreme Court restored Mary Beth Whitehead-Gould's parental rights in the Baby M case and declared surrogacy-for-pay illegal, five states--Michigan, Florida, Indiana, Nebraska and Kentucky--have banned surrogacy, raising to seven the number of states that prohibit the practice. Legislatures in more than a dozen states, including New York, are considering anti-surrogacy legislation. Louisiana had banned surrogacy before the Whitehead decision.