How To Avoid Unnecessary Pitfalls In Surrogate Pregancy

Other questions prospective parents need to ask before they use services in the United States include:

• Is there a clear understanding of who the legal parents of the child will be? Splitting motherhood between two women, or between a woman and a gay or lesbian couple, is never in the best interest of the child.
• What is the plan if the fetus is found to suffer severe medical abnormalities? How will the child's medical care be paid for, and where? The United States has complicated laws that never require a surrogate mother to have an abortion, but allow the biological parents to sue her for the costs of wrongful birth. This needs to be worked out before the procedure.
• If the plan is to take the child out of the United States, will he or she be permitted to enter the destination country? In some European countries, declaring the child to be the result of a paid surrogacy can result in criminal prosecution. In many countries, same-sex couples or unmarried couples cannot legally adopt. Every child born in the United States is entitled to a US passport, but the parents' home country may require them to be naturalized, often at great expense. Older Chinese parents seeking a second child, however, often find that the baby's American passport allows them to bring the child to China without having to deal with the two-child rule.
• Will the surrogate be paid more for multiple births, or for a cesarean section? If her pregnancy is complicated and she is not able to work, who will make sure she has adequate income while she is carrying the child? What happens to the baby if the intended parents die during the procedure? Will "extra embryos" to ensure the success of the pregnancy be aborted?

Prospective parents who can afford the costs of surrogacy usually go to the United States. A price tag of just $30 thousand to $50 thousand elsewhere, can be extremely attractive, especially to couples who have exhausted their financial resources on in vitro fertilization procedures that did not work.

The kinds of problems that arise in surrogacies outside the United States include:

• Hidden fees and charges. Some parents pay $25,000 to $30,000 for the initial procedure, and are billed tens of thousands of dollars more for tests and medical treatment.
• Multiple embryos. Knowing that payment usually will not be made if a pregnancy fails, some clinics will implant multiple embryos in the surrogate with the expectation that at least one will survive. The parents may be offered one baby when they arrive at the clinic, only to be told they must pay for its siblings or they will (and in many cases they actually will) be sold to the highest bidder. Conversely, some clinics are willing to work with unscrupulous parents who ask for the "pick of the litter" of multiple births. Any clinic willing to do this probably cuts other ethical corners.
• Ethical issues. Surrogates don't always get paid for their pregnancies. Many parents will want to make sure the woman who carries their child is treated well. For them, attorneys can work out agreements with women who live normal lives, outside of the surrogacy clinic, during the pregnancies, but with greater risk of pregnancy complications.

See Also: Using A Surrogate Mother To Carry Your Baby: Is Gestational Surrogacy For You?