After signing a bill legalizing late-term abortion in January, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo is pushing another measure that evangelicals and Catholics in the state have long opposed: commercial surrogacy. New York is one of the few states that ban surrogacy. This is one issue where the United States is more socially liberal than Europe: Most countries there ban surrogacy, and the European Parliament has condemned the practice. Cuomo is proposing to legalize it through the euphemistically titled Child-Parent Security Act.
Commercial surrogacy is chiefly a priority for same-sex couples, while some bioethics and Christian groups have opposed it on the grounds that it exploits lower-income women. The Catholic Church considers surrogacy a form of human trafficking. In a typical surrogacy contract, a couple uses in vitro fertilization to create a baby and then pays a woman to carry it to term. After the...
