Surrogate Mother Contracts

Your editorial (April 5), “All Questions, No Answers,” on surrogate parenting claimed that technology has learned how to outwit nature before it has learned whether we should--and wondered whether as a society we can be “comfortable” offering a biological way for childless couples to become parents.

Why should we be uncomfortable and why should be question the value of a contract in which a woman willingly consents to be artificially inseminated and bear a baby for the other party to the contract, who pays the woman for the service to be rendered?

In what sense does such a transaction smack of baby selling if the child is the natural child of the father? Why should renting a womb be objectionable if it is the one way for a childless couple to become parents?

And why should we worry that children born in such a way would be scarred if brought up in a home of acceptance and love? If technology can eventually eliminate the need for wombs in the child-bearing process, would it be men’s decisions that women must of necessity go on experiencing the pain of child birth?

Your editorial raises many questions that are not all that difficult to answer.

EDWIN ROBERTS

South Pasadena