Opinion ID: 1313999
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: this opinion's approach

Text: The determination of a question of parental rights to a child born of a surrogacy arrangement was before the New Jersey Supreme Court in Matter of Baby M. (1988) 109 N.J. 396 [537 A.2d 1227, 77 A.L.R.4th 1], a case that received worldwide attention. But in the surrogacy arrangement at issue there the woman who gave birth to the child, Marybeth Whitehead, had been impregnated by artificial insemination with the sperm of the intending father, William Stern. Whitehead thus provided the genetic material and carried the fetus to term. This case is different, because here those two aspects of the female role in reproduction were divided between two women. This process is known as gestational surrogacy, to distinguish it from the surrogacy arrangement involved in Baby M. [1] In this opinion, I first discuss gestational surrogacy in light of the medical advances that have made it a reality. I next consider the wider social and philosophical implications of using gestational surrogacy to give birth to a child, and set out some of the suggested models for deciding the child's parentage in this situation. I then review a comprehensive model legislative scheme, not enacted in California, designed to accommodate the interests of all participants in surrogacy arrangements. I next turn to California's Uniform Parentage Act, and critique the majority's reliance on intent as the determinative factor under that act in deciding who is the natural, and thus legal, mother of a child born of a gestational surrogacy arrangement. Finally, I explain why, in the absence of legislation designed to address the unique problems of gestational surrogacy, courts deciding who is the legal mother of a child born of gestational surrogacy should look to the best interests of that child.