On 9 April, New York became one of the last states to legalise payment to women to be ‘gestational carriers’ (a surrogate mother who gives birth to a child to whom she is not biologically related).
The legislation was smuggled into the state budget along with other non-fiscal measures. This meant it bypassed groups who would have protested it coming into law.
Those benefitting from the law will be able to make legally-enforceable surrogacy contracts. Amy Paulin, a politician from just outside New York, noted that the law gave the most protections to surrogates in the USA. A surrogate must be at least 21. The intended parents – those who will raise the child – must pay for legal counsel for their surrogate, as well as for surrogate’s health and life insurance during the pregnancy and for a year after their surrogate gives birth. These additional payments for the first year after birth will tremendously increase the costs to the prospective ‘parents’ beyond the current quarter of a million dollars it can currently cost the ‘purchaser’.
Those opposed to the law argued that it commercialises children, treating them like a commodity. Vulnerable women will be exploited as they are treated like human incubators, lured by the follow-up healthcare.
The law had a strong gay lobby backing it. In 2016 the Chicago Tribune reported that, although only representing 3% of the population, around 20% of donor eggs in fertility clinics were used by gay men.
In the same group of measures, a law was created outlawing charging more for products marketed at women, a so-called ‘pink tax’. The government seems more concerned that women in New York don’t buy overpriced shampoo than they are about women being bought and sold with an immeasurable cost to the child involved in the transaction.
