Melinda A. Roberts

Thus, there is a compelling policy argument as well as a suggestive constitutional argument that the practice of selling parental rights in general, and in particular the practice of commercial surrogacy, should not be permitted. These arguments favor the approach adopted in New York State as opposed to any more latitudinarian approach that would permit commercial surrogacy. Clearly, if the payment of money in exchange for parental rights should be prohibited, then we have a strong basis on which to reject the intentionalist theory, along with any other theory tht would link the parentage of a child with the payment of money. This conclusion is in no way undermined by the various arguments recited in part V above that favor the intentionalist theory since, as we have seen, these arguments are flawed

When her baby was born last June, Rossana Dalla Corte, age sixty-two, was thought to be the oldest woman ever to have given birth. Her pregnancy was achieved at a private fertility clinic in Italy, the same clinic that treated “Jennifer F.,” a London woman who, on Christmas day, 1993, at the age of fifty-nine, gave birth to twins. The reproductive procedure, likely to become more common during the next few years, has received intense scrutiny from health officials in Great Britain, France, and Italy. Moral questions concerning that procedure already have been taken up by the popular press in the United States. Such questions can be expected to take on a new urgency as the United States considers reshaping its health care system and, specifically, the circumstances under which coverage for infertility treatment will be provided.