Massachusetts House Unanimously Passes Bill to Allow Women to Sell Their Babies to Highest Bidder

Surrogacy is an inherently exploitative practice. It commodifies women and treats children as products. This specific bill enables particularly extreme arrangements. Most commercial surrogacy laws and surrogacy agencies restrict contracts to cases where the woman carrying the child is not genetically related to the child. Under genetic surrogacy arrangements, sanctioned by this bill, a woman would be allowed to accept money in exchange for her biological child.

In any other circumstance, if a woman accepts money in exchange for handing over her parental claim on her child, she has engaged in baby-selling. Under this bill, she can do exactly that if she has secured a valid surrogacy contract, even if she makes the arrangement with the purchasing parents after she has become pregnant, providing the contract is validated before the child is born.

Under H. 4672, the following would be perfectly legal: a woman undergoes the physical and mental health screenings required to become a surrogate, becomes pregnant via sperm from a sperm bank, and then posts to a surrogacy forum or social media group that she is not only available as a surrogate but already pregnant.

She could then choose to “match” with the couple willing to pay the highest “payment of consideration,” essentially auctioning off her child. As long as the surrogacy agreement meets the requirements outlined in the bill, it could be validated by a court and viewed as not only permissible but legally binding.

However, if that same woman became pregnant and decided to make an agreement with a couple to adopt her child, while insisting that she be paid for placing her child with them, she would be prosecuted for baby selling.