Surrogate Parenting

“Hard cases make bad law.” We make law based on the normal case, not the exception. Surrogate contracts should be routinely viewed as valid and subject to normal contract law. The claim of Anna Johnson is clearly invalid. She is not a parent of the child, merely a baby-sitter or nurse for an extremely young child and prospective adopter if for some reason the parents were found not able or willing to raise their child.

The Times feels it is somehow inhumane to view this as a contract. But not to do so is obviously inhumane. That would be to forbid people to arrange things in a manner they both find satisfactory. Nor do we clarify the legal picture by removing the profit motive. In fact, we remove one of the clearer standards from consideration and have to go by fuzzy ones.

The Times’ suggestion for a legislative approach clashes with its own acknowledgement that “writing rules to cover any contingency will be difficult, perhaps impossible.” Our best course is largely to treat these rare cases as pure contract disputes. Surrogate parents are not a subject for some bureaucrat to foul up.

DAVID CARL ARGALL

La Puente