|
Showing 1 - 2 of
2 matches in All Departments
With an Expanded Appendix on the Current Legal Status of Surrogacy
Arrangements A practice known since Biblical times, surrogate
motherhood has only recently leaped to prominence as a way of
providing babies for childless couples-and leaped to notoriety
through the dramatic case of Baby M. Contract surrogacy is
officially little more than ten years old, but by 1986 five hundred
babies had been born to mothers who gave them up to sperm donor
fathers for a fee, and the practice is growing rapidly. Martha
Field examines the myriad legal complexities that today enmesh
surrogate motherhood, and also looks beyond existing legal rules to
ask what society wants from surrogacy. A man's desire to be a
"biological" parent even when his wife is infertile-the father's
wife usually adopts the child-has led to this new kind of family,
and modern technology could further extend surrogacy's appeal by
making gestational surrogates available to couples who provide both
egg and sperm. But is surrogacy a form of babyselling? Is the
practice a private matter covered by contract law, or does adoption
law govern? Is it good or bad social and public policy to leave
surrogacy unregulated? Should the law allow, encourage, discourage,
or prohibit surrogate motherhood? Ultimately the answers will
depend on what the American public wants. In the difficult process
of sorting out such vexing questions, Martha Field has written a
landmark book. Showing that the problem is rather too much
applicable law than too little, she discusses contract law and
constitutional law, custody and adoption law, and the rights of
biological fathers as well as the laws governing sperm donation.
Competing values are involved all along the legal and social
spectrum. Field suggests that a federal prohibition would be most
effective if banning surrogacy is the aim, but federal prohibition
might not be chosen for a variety of reasons: a preference for
regulating surrogacy instead of driving it underground; a
preference for allowing regulation and variation by state; or a
respect for the interests of people who want to enter surrogacy
arrangements. Since the law can support a wide variety of
positions, Field offers one that seems best to reconcile the
competing values at stake. Whether or not paid surrogacy is made
illegal, she suggests that a surrogate mother retain the option of
abiding by or canceling the contract up to the time she freely
gives the child to the adopting couple. And if she cancels the
contract, she should be entitled to custody without having to prove
in court that she would be a better parent than the father.
Engaging in sex, becoming parents, raising children: these are
among the most personal decisions we make, and for people with
mental retardation, these decisions are consistently challenged,
regulated, and outlawed. This book is a comprehensive study of the
American legal doctrines and social policies, past and present,
that have governed procreation and parenting by persons with mental
retardation. It argues persuasively that people with retardation
should have legal authority to make their own decisions. Despite
the progress of the normalization movement, which has moved so many
people with mental retardation into the mainstream since the 1960s,
negative myths about reproduction and child rearing among this
population persist. Martha Field and Valerie Sanchez trace these
prejudices to the eugenics movement of the late nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries. They show how misperceptions have led to
inconsistent and discriminatory outcomes when third parties seek to
make birth control or parenting decisions for people with mental
retardation. They also explore the effect of these decisions on
those they purport to protect. Detailed, thorough, and just, their
book is a sustained argument for reform of the legal practices and
social policies it describes.
|
|