Surrogate Motherhood - The Legal and Human Issues (Hardcover)

A practice known since biblical times, surrogate motherhood has only recently leaped to prominence as a way of providing babies for childless couples-and leaped to notoriety through the dramatic case of Baby M. Contract surrogacy is officially little more than ten years old, but by 1986 five hundred babies had been born to mothers who gave them up to sperm donor fathers for a fee, and the practice is growing rapidly. Martha Field examines the myriad legal complexities that today enmesh surrogate motherhood, and also looks beyond existing legal rules to ask what society wants from surrogacy.