No Wombs For Rent

Almost 3,000 years ago, two women appeared before King Solomon, each claiming to be the mother of the same infant son. The king called for a sword and then commanded a servant to divide the child, with half to be given to each mother.

We all know the ending to the story. The woman with the false claim agreed to the arrangement. The true mother, out of a yearning to preserve the life of her child, relinquished her claim. Solomon, of course, knew it would turn out this way and gave the child to his true mother.

The contemporary version of the same story would, I surmise, confound even the wisdom of Solomon. My guess is that the great king would have questioned the wisdom of the arrangement that eventually landed the parents of Baby M in court, each claiming she was theirs.

In February 1985 Mary Beth Whitehead signed a contract in which she agreed to be artificially inseminated by William Stern, to bear his child, and relinquish the child to him for $10,000. A year later she gave birth to a girl she named Sara. She decided she wanted to keep her daughter.

Some of the details surrounding the Baby M case are hard to forget. White-head's claim to her daughter was undermined by both her own instability during the ordeal and an effort by Stern's advocates to damage her credibility, including accusations of her incompetence as a mother because she doesn't play "pat-a-cake" well enough to satisfy a professor emeritus of child psychiatry. In the end, Baby M was given over to her father and a life as Melissa Elizabeth Stern.

The details of the case will likely fade as the drama leaves the public arena. But what will not go away are the questions it raises about the practice of surrogate motherhood and the ethics of sexuality and family life.

MARY BETH WHITEHEAD came across as no heroine during the trial, but what is clear is that she was a victim of class prejudice. She is a high-school dropout, married to a sanitation worker, who had two children by the time she was 18. Elizabeth Stern, William Stern's wife, is a professor of pediatrics who delayed having children to earn three postgraduate degrees. Baby M was awarded to the Sterns, in part, because, in the eyes of the court, their $90,000-a-year family income made them better able to care for her.

That reality points to the truth that acquiring a child through surrogate motherhood is a privilege that only the rich can afford. And deciding to become a surrogate mother is a choice that only someone badly in need of $10,000 would make, despite whatever altruistic motives may be mixed in.

But for many families in this country, $10,000 is a significant financial boon, and the business of surrogate motherhood opens women to the risk of being coerced by husbands, relatives, or creditors into helping the family budget by renting their wombs. It also opens the danger of creating an exploited class of breeder women who are forced into the emotional anguish of cutting ties from their own flesh and blood, and who are valued for their unnatural ability to do so.

Whitehead had promised in signing the surrogate-mother contract "not [to] form or attempt to form a parent-child relationship with any child or children she may conceive, carry to term and give birth to." I would call her inability to follow through on her promise a sign of her emotional and maternal health. The court called it a breach of contract, an offense against the law.

For surrogate motherhood to be successful, the bearing, birthing, and nursing of children, and the attendant emotions, must be devalued and discounted. One expert witness hired by the Sterns referred to Whitehead's role as a "surrogate uterus." And indeed that is where surrogate-motherhood proponents would like to keep the argument, for in truth we all know that Mary Beth Whitehead is Baby M's real mother. If anyone is a surrogate mother it is Elizabeth Stern, as Katha Pollitt has pointed out in The Nation.

IN SIGNING THE CONTRACT, Whitehead signed away rights that women over centuries have fought so hard to gain: the right of ownership of their lives and the right to legal custody of their children, both of which have been undermined throughout history and, in many places, still are today by patriarchy, slavery, polygamy, and various forms of concubinage. William Stern determined such things as what medication Whitehead could take while pregnant and insisted in the contract that she abort the fetus if during medical tests congenital defects were found. Whatever may be said about women helping out their infertile sisters, surrogate motherhood is, after all, a way for men to get children bearing their genes.

Some surrogate-motherhood proponents argue that better screening of potential surrogates will avoid sticky situations like the Baby M case. And indeed Noel Keane, the lawyer who arranged the contract, failed to inform the Sterns that a psychological evaluation showed Whitehead might have strong feelings about giving up the baby, presumably so as not to lose his substantial finder's fee.

Others feel that proper regulation of the practice will take away its messiness. But even if all the psychologists and legislators possessed the wisdom of Solomon, neither careful screening nor thorough regulation will erase the ethical issues that surrogate motherhood raises.

Twenty-seven states are considering legislation that would legalize and regulate surrogate motherhood. The issue is one that clearly is not about to go away. And if the practice continues, the Baby M case is not likely to be the only painful public drama, but only the first.

Especially in times like ours, when divorce rates are overwhelming, 1.5 million children are aborted annually, and the social analysts are talking about the disintegration of family values, the integrity of the family and the strength of its bonds must be supported rather than undermined. It is difficult enough to explain to the thousands of children who long for homes--the ones who don't fit the description of the perfect, healthy, white baby--why they are "hard to place." Why would we want to add to these a class of children who need to be told their mothers conceived them for the purpose of giving them away?

The anguish that couples who hope to conceive go through is real and cannot be minimized. Recent experience with two couples who are close friends made me intimately aware of the pain and longing. One couple eventually conceived and gave birth to a son, while the other adopted a "hard to place" infant boy. The joy these two children have brought their parents and our community is immeasurable.

They have reminded us that parenting a child is a gift, not a right. And no tampering with the ways of God and nature will ever change that.

Joyce Hollyday was associate editor of Sojourners when this article appeared.