Surrogacy Raises Troubling Issues

* I read in the Sept. 14 Times about John Buzzanca, who has been absolved of his financial responsibilities to a little girl, Jaycee Louise Buzzanca.

This case illustrates much of what is so terribly wrong with the whole concept of surrogate parenting and why we should simply not be permitted to mess around with nature in this horrendously intrusive and self-serving way.

Buzzanca and his wife obtained an egg and a sperm from unknown donors. The egg and sperm were inserted into a healthy woman who agreed for a sum to carry this child to term and deliver it to the Buzzancas. Buzzanca filed for divorce a month before the baby was born.

He has now been absolved of any legal responsibilities for this baby, as he is not considered the baby’s legal father. In fact, according to this ruling, the baby has no legal parents whatsoever.

The anonymous sperm and egg donors, who are the child’s biological parents, have no stake or responsibility in this matter. The surrogate mother was just a rented vessel, although she at one point was seeking custody of the child herself. And now the baby has been discarded by the man who commissioned her existence in the first place.

Apparently his ex-wife, with whom the baby lives, wants to be her mother, though her legal status as such has not been substantiated by this recent court ruling.

Medical science has allowed us to create a child who has no legal standing as anyone’s responsibility.

Women and children have been bought, sold and rented since time immemorial, so this is nothing new. Advances in medical technology are simply allowing some new permutations.

These days, children can be commissioned, and they can also be returned and discarded, like the commodities they are in this sort of a system.

As was made painfully clear over 10 years ago in the infamous Baby M case, surrogate motherhood creates problems for which there simply are no acceptable solutions.

SUZANNE SOUTHWORTH

Dana Point

* Re “Case May Redefine Fatherhood in State,” Sept. 14:

I know Jaycee Buzzanca and would like to assure your readers that she is not without parents. She has a loving and devoted mother who has been caring for her since she took her first breath.

Because of that care, Jaycee is a delightful and well-adjusted toddler. Luanne Buzzanca is her mother and will always be her mother with or without all of this legal wrangling.

NANCY KOPROWSKI

Irvine