DC's proposed surrogacy bill poses a serious threat to children.

Collaborative Reproduction 

and the Things We Should Not Do

by Elise Italiano

The city council of Washington, DC should consider the psychological damage to children that would come of a new bill legalizing surrogacy contracts.

The Washington, DC, city council is currently considering the "Surrogacy Parenting Agreement of 2013," or Bill 20-32, proposed by Councilman David Catania. The bill's hearing showed how policy and law on reproductive technologies are crafted. Many of the testimonies on behalf of the bill were unsurprising, given current cultural conversations about marriage equality and reproductive freedom. Others, though, were extremely disturbing, especially those demanding that citizens have a "right to construct the families of their dreams."

The repeated appeal to this idea from various constituencies--intended parents, law firms, and fertility clinicians--made it clear that a market and an ideology of designing-your-ideal-family is quickly emerging. It was also clear that collaborative reproduction does not serve the children produced under these arrangements, no matter the intentions or planning of the parents. The DC city council should take a pregnant pause before knowingly putting children in jeopardy.

Councilman Catania's proposed bill would overturn DC's status as the last place in the country that prohibits residents from entering into surrogacy contracts. A violation of the current law can be punished with a $10,000 fine and up to a year in prison.

Catania's proposal would lift the burden for intended parents who cannot gestate a baby on their own but want to create children genetically related to at least one of the parents. He proposes that both gestational surrogacy, in which the surrogate carries the child, and traditional surrogacy, in which the surrogate contributes her egg and carries the child, should be permitted.

The bill is largely based on the premise that consenting adults, whether single, married, homosexual, heterosexual, fertile, or infertile, should be able to enter into a contract with a surrogate in DC in order to build the family they desire. Supporters of the bill argue that they are faced with an undue financial and emotional burden because they have to negotiate with surrogates who are not geographically proximate.

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