Controversial British Surrogate in O.C. : Infertility: Activist urges broader access to technologies and stricter regulation in bearing children for others.

When Kim Cotton gave birth to a baby girl in England five years ago, she made national 9eadlines. Now there’s a law in the United Kingdom against doing what she did.

What Cotton did was allow an agency to make money by arranging for her to be a surrogate mother for an infertile couple.

The case prompted a tidal wave of negative publicity in England. Headlines blasted “rent-a-womb” arrangements, and within six months, Parliament had passed a law forbidding any brokerage’s or agency’s receiving money for arranging a surrogate pregnancy.

The law, passed in June, 1985, allows infertile couples to pay a surrogate to carry their child but bans profit-making by any other party.

Cotton, 34, a Londoner who has a 10-year-old and a 14-year-old of her own, is now one of England’s leading voices for surrogate parenting. During a trip to Orange County recently, she reflected on the need to make surrogation available and to regulate it so no one gets hurt.

“You can’t just outlaw it,” Cotton said. “People in this age won’t accept childlessness. There is the technology to help them, and there is all this feeling; people want to be parents. You can’t just say no. That will just drive it underground.”

“Surrogacy can be extremely hazardous,” Cotton said. “There are many pitfalls, because you’re dealing with emotions and with desperate people. Unregulated, it can be disastrous. . . .”

Although some states have banned surrogation, California has not, and surrogation arrangements are increasingly popular here. Few have been tested in court, but efforts to criminalize surrogation as well as those to legalize and regulate it persist in the state Legislature.

Orange County recently attracted nationwide attention when local resident Anna L. Johnson sued to keep the baby she is carrying for another couple, even though she has no genetic connection to the fetus.

The Beverly Hills-based Center for Surrogate Parenting, the leading arranger of surrogate births in California, has found that most of its surrogate mothers are from Orange County, said Ralph Fagen, co-director of the center. They are generally 27- or 28-year-old married women with two children and median family incomes of $30,000, who want to do something important for a childless couple, he said.

“The typical surrogate has a more traditional background and lifestyle, more conservative values, so we tend to find her in Orange County,” Fagen said. “She’s someone you’d find at the PTA meeting. . . .”

Cotton came to Southern California to stay abreast of the latest debates and developments in surrogate parenting. Los Angeles and Orange counties boast some of the most cutting-edge reproductive technology in the country and offer many options for infertile couples.

During her trip, Cotton talked with infertility specialists and with the directors of the Center for Surrogate Parenting. She went to Los Angeles and the city of Orange to participate in support groups for women who are or have been surrogate mothers and to Manhattan Beach to join an annual picnic of parents who hired surrogates to bear their children. Cotton also visited a Santa Ana laboratory where many surrogate mothers are inseminated.

As the leader of COTS, Childlessness Overcome Through Surrogacy, Cotton has played a role in persuading the reluctant British Medical Assn. to help infertile couples by performing artificial inseminations or in-vitro fertilizations on surrogate mothers. Until recently, she said, doctors were hesitant to do so because they were afraid of being cited for profiting from surrogation.

But most infertile couples in England are still afraid to enter into surrogation contracts because local government child-welfare agencies frequently intervene, forcing a series of custody hearings that take up to a year, Cotton said. Such intervention is rare in California surrogation contracts unless a birth mother has a change of heart, experts say.

The ban on profit-making surrogation agencies in England means that surrogation arrangements are made through word-of-mouth and with little or no medical and psychological screening of the surrogate mothers, Cotton said. COTS pairs surrogates with infertile couples but cannot be paid for the service, so it lacks the resources to hire experts to provide screening and support, she said.

By contrast, surrogate mothers who are paired with infertile couples through reputable agencies in the United States are fully evaluated and are given intensive emotional support throughout the process, according to Cotton and Fagen.

Cotton dismissed the belief of surrogation opponents who feel that carrying another couple’s baby exploits and degrades women by turning them into “baby machines.”

“It’s a natural high,” she said of her own surrogate mothering experience. “You’re doing something so worthwhile by bringing so much happiness to people.”