Bluestem doesn't have any clever snark to preface this story from the Minnesota Reformer.
Minnesota conservative groups liken surrogacy to slavery
By Christopher IngrahamConservative groups testifying this week before the Senate Judiciary and Public Safety Committee likened surrogacy — which allows infertile couples to enlist the aid of a woman to carry and deliver a child for them — to modern-day slavery.
The groups gave their testimony in opposition to SF3504/HF3567, which establishes a legal framework governing Minnesota surrogacy contracts. Current statute neither explicitly allows nor prohibits the practice, leaving potential parents and their surrogates to navigate legal issues on their own.
A bipartisan 2016 legislative task force recommended the creation of a legal framework to spell out requirements for surrogates and intended parents; clarify and establish parental rights; set compensation guidelines; and provide for enforcement of contract provisions.
The Senate bill, authored by Sen. Erin May Quade, DFL-Apple Valley, is a step in that direction. It’s supported by groups that advocate for people dealing with infertility, as well as by the nonpartisan Uniform Law Commission, which drafts “model legislation in the areas of state law for which uniformity among the states is advisable.”
Conservative and religious groups, however, have come out against the bill.
“On December 6, 1865, the USA ratified the 13th amendment which banned slavery in the United States,” said Rebecca Delahunt, director of public policy for the Minnesota Family Council, in testimony on Friday. “Yet the Minnesota Legislature is considering a policy in 2024 to regulate the trade of children, opening the door to the legal buying and selling of children through surrogacy. How is it possible to wholeheartedly support the 13th amendment of the United States but then try to legalize the selling of children to unrelated adults in 2024?”
(Surrogate mothers in Minnesota can already be compensated for their services, as current law does not prohibit it.)
Patience Griswold, an engagement coordinator with conservative group Them Before Us, struck a similar note by arguing that “surrogacy turns children into commodities to be awarded to the adults with the money and means to acquire them” and that it “creates a class of people who can be sold.”
The Minnesota Catholic Conference used similar language in written testimony opposing the bill.
In the United States, roughly one in five married couples experience infertility, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Several thousand babies are born each year through surrogacy, which can cost would-be parents north of $100,000 in legal fees, IVF and medical expenses, and compensation to the surrogate.
Experts who study the practice have generally found that “most surrogacy arrangements are successfully implemented and most surrogate mothers are well-motivated and have little difficulty separating from the children born as a result of the arrangement,” according to a comprehensive 2015 review of the existing literature.
Additionally, that study turned up “no evidence of harm to the children born as a result of surrogacy.”
One of the most comprehensive studies of surrogacy tracked several dozen families from surrogate pregnancy to the resulting childrens’ young adulthood. It found “no differences between assisted reproduction and unassisted conception families in mothers’ or young adults’ psychological well-being, or the quality of family relationships.”
A 2015 YouGov survey found that over 70% of Americans supported the practice, and a majority agreed that surrogate mothers should be able to seek compensation for it.
Photo: Rebecca Delahunt speaks before the Senate Judiciary and Public Safety Committee on March 22, 2024 (MN Senate Media Services/ Minnesota Reformer).
This Minnesota Reformer story is republished online under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.
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