Baby M, the surrogacy contract, and the health care professional: unanswered questions.

The Baby M case 1 has forced us to take sides in the public debate over surrogate motherhood. Last year, advocates of this form of noncoital reproduction praised the New Jersey trial court for supporting the freedom to contract for such "womb renting" services, while critics warned that enforcement of such surrogacy contracts would condone the sale of babies and the exploitation of women as baby factories. In its unanimous opinion, the New Jersey Supreme Court sided with the critics. 3 Based on New Jersey's adoption law and public policy, the court refused to enforce the contract that provided money to a surrogate mother in return for her agreeing to be artificially inseminated with the semen of another woman's husband, to conceive a child, to carry it to term, and to relinquish her parental rights and surrender her child to the natural father and his wife, regardless of the child's best interests. The court believed that its "declaration that this surrogacy contract is unenforceable and illegal is sufficient to deter similar agreements."4 The court was particularly offended by the payment of money in exchange for bearing and relinquishing a baby. "There are," it said, "in Karen H. Rothenberg