WA Legalizes Commercial Surrogacy
The State of Washington recently moved to legalize commercial surrogacy, allowing people to pay women to bear children for them.
Previously, surrogates could be reimbursed for their medical bills and related expenses, but they could not be hired or paid to be surrogate mothers.
John Stonestreet at the Colson Center for Christian Worldview writes,
Women can now rent out their wombs in Washington State.
Sponsors of the bill insisted that the goal of the legislation is to reduce the suffering of infertile couples. But its real-world result will be to further commodify human life and exploit desperate women.
American law on this subject is difficult to pin down. A few states, like Washington, explicitly permit surrogacy. Some just look the other way; and then others, like New York, explicitly prohibit it.
This ambiguity is not the case around the world.
A 2015 European Union Parliament resolution condemned paid surrogacy, because it “undermines the human dignity of the woman since her body and its reproductive functions are used as a commodity.” It called the practice exploitative, violence against women, and “a matter of urgency in human rights.”
And you know what? In this case, the EU is 100 percent correct.
Family Council opposes commercial surrogacy, in part, because we believe it amounts to buying and selling babies. That’s why we supported Rep. Greg Leding’s 2017 bill prohibiting commercial surrogacy in Arkansas; unfortunately the bill never came up for a vote before the legislature adjourned.