When a Womb for Rent Goes Unpaid, is Eviction Abortion?

When you rent a room and don't keep up with your payments, you're evicted. But if you hire a surrogate mother to bear your child and don't pay her, does she have the right to 'evict' (i.e. abort) your fetus?

An article at Slate.com compares the AIG and Bernie Madoff scandals to a California case involving a company that employs surrogate mothers for infertile couples; it's described as "a familiar tale of vanishing funds and defaulted obligations" but with a twist - it's not life savings but life that's at risk.

The company, SurroGenesis, matched couples with surrogate mothers and encouraged the parents to place their money in a trust fund - administered by a partner company - which would pay the surrogates. On March 13, clients learned that their money was gone.

According to Slate:

Some couples have managed to pay, out of their own funds, the monthly installments that the companies had promised to the surrogates. But others can't. Andrew Vorzimer, a lawyer involved in the case, says, "We've got couples in the midst of pregnancies with no ability to pay the surrogate."

Surrogates aren't mercenaries. But they do need to be paid for their sacrifices. With every week that passes, they endure more of pregnancy's burdens....They take on serious medical risks. They forgo activities that might harm the fetus. They lose the ability to commute to and work at other jobs. They have bills to pay....

If you stop paying your surrogate, she needs to quit and find another job, just like any other worker. But surrogacy isn't like any other job. The only way to quit a pregnancy is to abort it.

There are 70 individuals affected by the SurroGenesi case. Despite the fact that the surrogate mothers involved may never be compensated for their expenses, lost wages or medical bills, none are choosing abortion. That's a good thing, because apparently if you were the biological mother, you'd have no say if your surrogate chose to terminate the pregnancy:

If you're the child's genetic mother, you can put a clause in the contract stipulating under what circumstances the surrogate can abort the pregnancy. But no court will enforce that clause, because you aren't the one who's pregnant. The surrogate is. She can choose abortion unilaterally.

The technology is readily available for infertile couples to become parents, and the methods are clear-cut. Considerably less clear are the ethical issues surrounding the process should things go awry. It takes a special woman to give of herself in this way and surrender 9 months of her life to bring another life into this world; and one might presuppose that she'd be less likely to consider abortion a viable option in any situation.

But with all things, it may only be a matter of time before the unthinkable happens and we see a case like this debated in the courts. Shouldn't our ethics catch up with our technology before that happens?

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