Surrogate motherhood, psychiatric screening and informed consent, baby selling, and public policy.

Recent evidence indicates a growing demand for newborn white babies for adoption in this country as well as a decreasing supply. Increasing fertility problems among women are said to be a result of at least three factors: an increased incidence of veneral disease, side effects of contraceptive measures including birth control pills and the IUD, and couples deciding to wait until later in life to bear children. I The supply of newborn white babies is said to be decreasing for at least three possible reasons: increased birth control, more terminations of pregnancies (abortions), and an increased percentage of single mothers keeping their newborn babies. In any case, the net result has been an increased difficulty for infertile married couples to adopt newborn white babies. Often they have to wait many years, ifthey can ?et such newborn white babies at all. Recently such adoptions have become mternational with white newborns being brought from such places as South America to infertile couples in the United States; but even these sources have been less productive recently. Where is a couple to turn? In the last few years more and more married couples with infertile wives have turned to obtaining surrogate mothers. A ~urrogate mother is a woman who contracts with a man to be artificially Inseminated, to carry the child, and after delivery, to give all parental rights to the biological father. Usually the man is married to a woman unable to ~ave a child. 2 Often the surrogate mother is paid a fee for her services, which has added another controversy to this already emotionally loaded procedure. Later, the wife of the biological father probably will want to a?opt .the child. The advantages to the parental couple include having a biOlogic child of the husband and being able to choose the biologic mother of the child.