It’s Time to Conceive Baby-Trafficking Laws

Once upon a time, the thought of people tooling around in motorized vehicles was pretty far-fetched. So, when the technology that gave us the automobile came to pass, it didn’t occur to governments that people needed any kind of regulations to drive the things.

Eventually, governments realized that people were serious about these newfangled machines. So, in an attempt to inject some semblance of social order into this new world of motorized traffic, public officials thought of something called driver’s licenses.

In its way, government finally caught up to the technology.

Now we find ourselves a century later and, as you’ve probably noticed, things continue to change. Technology still knows no master, running amok and dragging governments behind it on a leash like a Doberman leading an invalid.

We whisk you now to Orange County Superior Court, where Judge Nancy Wieben Stock is the latest unlucky arbiter of a dispute involving surrogate parenting. This case follows on the heels of last year’s celebrated case involving surrogate mother Anna Johnson, who signed on to deliver a child that was the biological product of another couple. After the birth, Johnson wanted to share parenting because, as the birth mother, she claimed to have bonded with the child during her pregnancy.

That case seemed an easy call. The presumably happily married couple that supplied the sperm and egg seemed the logical parents, and a judge so ruled.

But the case currently in Stock’s court steers the surrogacy question in a different direction. This time, an egg from the surrogate was fertilized by the prospective father, Robert Moschetta, with the ostensible idea being for the surrogate to deliver a child to Moschetta and his wife, Cynthia.

Lo and behold, the couple’s marriage foundered, and the fireworks began. The husband wanted the baby. So did the estranged wife, who although not biologically related to the baby, helped raise it for the first six months of its life. So did the surrogate, who is the biological as well as the birth mother.

Thus, the Wheel of Surrogacy got another big spin, leaving three adults and a 10-month-old baby wondering where the arrow of justice is going to point. Already, in what seems a curious decision, Stock has ruled out any legal claim to the child by the estranged wife.

It’s time for state government to start controlling these games. As with motorized traffic, it’s time for government to catch up with the technology of baby trafficking.

Robert Walmsley, one of the attorneys who represented the couple in the Anna Johnson case, said he’s convinced that state laws are needed for subrogacy arrangements. Such law, he said, conceivably could cover everything from the contract between the parties to the terms that should be met before such arrangements are agreed upon. And while Walmsley conceded that it may not be possible to force prospective surrogate parties to undergo counseling, for example, the state could set up some guidelines.

Such steps are already taken at the Center for Surrogate Parenting in Beverly Hills, according to co-director Ralph Fagen. Couples and potential surrogates both are screened in a wide range of areas before the center agrees to match the parties.

For that reason, Fagen said, none of the center’s 141 surrogate births has wound up in court.

Although Fagen said that some less reputable surrogate operations “act pretty much as a dating service,” the overwhelming number of surrogate cases work out. Of the estimated 4,000 babies born to surrogate mothers in the last dozen years, Fagen said, the Moschetta case is only the 14th to go to court. But that doesn’t stop Fagen from advocating state legislation.

“We’ve been talking to legislators for the past five years,” Fagen said. “It (legislation) would help because we think it’s wrong for society to leave those infertile couples who are doing surrogacy in limbo, and it’s certainly wrong for children who are already born and for those who are being carried to be in some sort of legal limbo.”

When it works, surrogacy makes everyone happy. But in the cases where it doesn’t--even if they’re relatively infrequent--the impact can be lifelong. The 10-month-old baby innocently awaiting the outcome of the Moschetta case is proof of that.

Like the auto, surrogacy isn’t going away--not with 1 in 6 couples infertile and with the technology available to make babies happen outside the home.

The potential turmoil from such cases, Walmsley said, is not unlike that sometimes seen in adoption cases. “Like in the Anna Johnson case, the emotional turmoil to everyone involved is of such a severe nature that clearly legislation is needed,” Walmsley said. “Why ignore the problem? There’s no need to. If legislation would help cure it, all the better.”

Theoretically, we develop technology to improve people’s lives.

It’s time for the California Legislature to catch up with the technology.

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by writing to him at The Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, Calif. 92626, or calling (714) 966-7821.