Who’s the Mother? Midwifery Care in Adoption and ‘Surrogacy’

Barbara Katz Rothman, PhD

ABSTRACT
The first time I ever heard about surrogacy was in 1986 during a phone call from a reporter about what came to be called the “Baby M” case, the first really publicized American surrogacy case and a story that dominated the airwaves and my life for months. I’d written a book about prenatal testing1 and done the book tours one did in those days. When a new reproductive technology issue hit, (and we didn’t even have that terminology yet) I was someone people in the media figured they could call for a quote. So the phone rang (in those days before e-mail), and a reporter started explaining to me that there was this woman who’d agreed to get pregnant by artificial insemination and turn the baby over to the guy and his wife. Now she’d apparently changed her mind and wanted to keep the baby. Did I have a comment?

This article has been peer-reviewed.