Florida has taken a significant step into the surrogacy realm, becoming the first state to do so after a gay couple from France entered into a surrogacy agreement with a woman from Florida.
The couple sought early custody of their prospective child through the Broward County Court.
While Judge Marlon Weiss approved their request, he raised concerns about the legality of surrogacy, citing the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery.
He mentioned, “If a fetus has legal personality rights, then it can’t be treated as property within a contractual arrangement.” This brings up some tough questions.
In November, Florida’s Attorney General James Usmeyer also wanted to get involved after the child was born, labeling the practice as unconstitutional. He stated, “Currently, registered sex offenders and foreign nationals, including those from China, are buying thousands of babies from U.S. surrogacy companies. This modern slavery is morally wrong and poses risks to children and national security. It has to be stopped.”
Stuckey articulated her agreement with this perspective. “If you genuinely believe unborn children are human beings, then trading them as commodities—like in the case of surrogacy, especially involving two fathers—is akin to slavery,” she remarked.
She explained that in such arrangements, there’s a need to procure one woman’s eggs while utilizing another woman’s uterus. “This dynamic commodifies women’s bodies and the children they bear,” she noted, adding that, “I wouldn’t suggest every child in these situations faces immediate danger or abuse, but it’s troubling how bodily autonomy is disregarded for the sake of having a baby.”
Stuckey recounted an interview with a woman named Brittany, who had carried a child for a same-sex couple. At around 20 weeks pregnant, Brittany received a cancer diagnosis, and the couple urged her to terminate the pregnancy, concerned about the child being born prematurely. “Brittany was resolute against abortion, but despite the outcome—the baby sadly did not survive—one of the biological fathers didn’t even visit her in the hospital,” she said.
Such narratives, she argued, are distressingly prevalent. “In many surrogacy agreements, women are bound to the stipulation of abortion if the intended parents wish for it. I suspect this happens more often than we realize,” she added. “Essentially, these babies lack rights.”
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