Surrogacy: The risks of going it alone

Surrogacy through the Madison-based Surrogacy Center isn’t cheap — intended parents pay the center about $75,000, which covers the surrogate’s fee, legal fees, the center’s services and medical expenses. Attorney Carol Gapen says that while middle-class intended parents often borrow from parents and friends and even take out home equity loans to pay the fees, poorer couples might not have that option.

“People at the bottom of the socioeconomic scale aren’t going to be able to do it because they don’t have the resources to borrow the money or to save it,” she says.

Intended parents who can’t afford professional surrogacy services sometimes turn to traditional surrogacy, in which the surrogate is also the biological mother of the child. But going it alone is risky, Gapen says.

She and her associate, attorney Lynn Bodi, say traditional surrogacy often goes awry because the surrogate feels attached to the baby, the surrogate decides the intended parents would not be good parents, or the intended parents’ relationship falls apart. Intended parents using traditional surrogacy without legal aid may have difficulties once the child is born, since hospitals cannot allow intended parents to take the child home unless they are the legal parents.

Surrogates also face dangers when they agree to take part in surrogacy without the help of physicians and legal and mental health professionals. Bodi explains that when legal questions arise in traditional surrogacy cases, surrogates sometimes fear the courts might deem them the legal guardians of the baby, instead of the intended parents.

As most surrogates have families and children of their own, the addition of another child threatens the stability of a surrogate’s family life.

Bodi warns, “It’s very expensive to do [surrogacy] correctly, but it’s more expensive to do it incorrectly, generally speaking.”