Four-time surrogate Lynlee Weber denounced Monday a Senate bill designed to make it illegal to enter into surrogacy pregnancy contracts in Kansas under the threat of a $10,000 fine and a one-year jail sentence. 

Weber, a Wichita resident who gave birth to six children as a surrogate, said the measure introduced by Sen. Mary Pilcher-Cook, a Johnson County Republican and chair of the Senate Public Health and Welfare Committee, should be rejected by lawmakers. 

"When reading Senate Bill 302, my heart aches and my stomach turns," said Weber, who has a 12-year-old daughter. " Women must be able to decide for themselves if carrying a child for someone else is best for them.  Intended parents must be able to decide for themselves if surrogacy is the best way for their child to enter this world." 

Supporters of Pilcher-Cook's bill also made their voices heard during the standing-room-only committee hearing at the Capitol. 

Kathleen Sloan, program director at the Council for Responsible Genetics, said lack of restrictions on surrogate pregnancies in the United States rendered the country the "wild west of third-party reproduction." 

"Surrogacy is the stark manifestation of the commodification of women and their bodies," she said. " The commercialism of surrogacy raises the specter of a black market and baby selling, of the establishment of a breeder class of factory farmed women.  Surrogacy degrades a pregnancy to a service for sale and a baby to a product for purchase." 

The senators took no action on the bill, but left open the possibility of additional testimony or discussion Tuesday. 

Under the bill introduced last week by Pilcher-Cook, the state of Kansas would make surrogate parenting contracts void and unenforceable.  Any person or entity involved in the formation of a contract could be prosecuted for a misdemeanor offense punishable by a fine of up to $10,000 and imprisonment in the county jail for up to one year. 

Financial implications for government agencies in Kansas are unclear, but incarcerating pregnant women could impose medical costs on counties related to the pregnancy and child birth. 

Senate President Susan Wagle, R-Wichita, said ideals of representative democracy made it inappropriate to limit Pilcher-Cook's decision to introduce the surrogacy bill and hold hearings on the legislation. 

"However," Wagle said, "I personally don't support this bill and I certainly don't think a majority of our members do either.  Criminalizing surrogate mothers is not a priority of the Legislature." 

Sen. Laura Kelly, a Topeka Democrat on the Senate health committee, said operation of the committee by Pilcher-Cook had devolved into an unproductive sideshow.  Last week, Pilcher-Cook had two women undergo live sonograms in front of the committee with images displayed on a large television. 

"This committee has become a three-ring circus and a platform for the chair to promote her own ideological agenda," Kelly said. 

Pilcher-Cook said the bill on surrogate pregnancies was modeled after legal boundaries applicable to residents of the District of Columbia.  Children born into surrogacy arrangements and women who carried a fetus to birth in accordance with surrogacy contracts deserve a chance to express regrets about the process, she said. 

"I believe a lot of individuals have a lot to say on this subject," the senator said. " This to me was just a beginning, so that we could really understand where our society is going with this technological process." 

Michael Schuttloffel, executive director of the Kansas Catholic Conference, said the Roman Catholic church opposed surrogate pregnancy because it undermined dignity of the surrogate mother and the child. 

Modern society is inappropriately comfortable with "exotic reproductive experiments" that intentionally pull children from biological parents, he said. 

"We have nothing but compassion for couples who have been struggling with infertility and miscarriage," he said. " However, we don't think that surrogacy is the answer.  We think that people should look to alternatives like adoption." 

Physician David Grainger, who works at the Center for Reproductive Medicine in Wichita, said the crisis involving surrogate women and children contemplated by the Senate bill didn't exist in Kansas.  He said the bill's intent was to "attack the individual choices that are made after very careful and thoughtful consideration" by people struggling with infertility. 

He said he turned to text in the Bible while weighing implications of the pending legislation. 

"This bill would have criminalized the most important surrogacy pregnancy this world has ever seen.  Mary had a verbal contract with Gabriel.  She was carrying a pregnancy that was not her husband's, and she gave that pregnancy back to God after he was born.  What a gift.  What a sacrifice," Grainger said. 

Kelsey and Andy Marske, a Shawnee couple who brought twins Augusta and Arthur to the hearing, said they were alarmed a state legislator would attempt to deny people who can’t have a family naturally the opportunity to be parents. 

"It's disheartening to be here just six weeks after our twins were born and know this could be banned for someone else," Kelsey Marske said. " I would ask that the state not intervene with such a sensitive, personal and hopeful family-building option." 

Jennifer Lahl, president of the Center for Bioethics and Culture and maker of the film, "Breeders: A Subclass of Women?"  said surrogacy ignored the psychological harm done to newborns when removed from the birth mother. 

She said a movement to lift a New York state prohibition on paid surrogates was led by gay activists who appreciated the only way for same-sex male couples to have a biologically related child was by paying women for eggs and for carrying them to gestation. 

"How is this different from the sale of children?"  Lahl said. " How are children protected when stripped away from the only mother they have known?"