Advances in reproductive technology have resulted in a multitude of ways to have a baby including gestational surrogacy, where one woman’s embryo is implanted in a surrogate who potentially carries the baby to term in exchange for a fee.

Since the 1980s, surrogacy has been an expensive procedure, and fraught with legal and regulatory challenges in the United States and other western countries.  And much like other labor-intensive (pun intended) work that is heavily regulated, baby carrying can now be outsourced to less expensive workers in countries where there is less oversight and fewer rights for workers in general, and women in particular.

It is a simple matter of geography.  Hiring a woman in Ohio to be a surrogate isn’t physically any different than hiring a woman in India.  There are just longer plane rides for the biological mother who first creates the embryo and then later when she goes to collect the baby.

However, a woman in India will make only a fraction of the fee that an Ohio surrogate and she would have to sign a contract stipulating she won’t abort the pregnancy and will undergo a C-section to control the timing of the baby’s birth. Both of these agreements could potentially endanger the surrogate’s health.

The surrogates are also closely monitored, living in supervised housing where their diets and lifestyle habits are controlled.  I can’t help but think of these facilities as baby farms, which has a uniquely dystopian ring.

These issues have already been covered in the media but the recent attention to outsourcing in this country makes foreign surrogacy arrangements newly relevant.

Federal legislation might be in order to ensure that women who purchase surrogate services abroad uphold the same human and labor rights that would be enforced if they were to enter into similar arrangements at home.

Kristen Taylor lives in Silver Lake with her family.  She is the owner of Juvie, a store for older boys and girls.