At just 19 years old, Amanda Roman suffered a stroke, prompting her to be on a variety of medications, including blood thinners, and eventually leading to a uterine ablation, meaning that she would no longer be able to have a period.
This meant if Roman wanted to have a genetic link to her child, she would have to use a surrogate.
“When I met my husband, it was kind of like off the bat when we were dating, like we started having these conversations, and I told him we would have to use a surrogate if we ever wanted a child,” Roman told the Washington Examiner.
Just months after getting married in 2019, Roman and her husband began IVF treatment and froze nine embryos that passed the genetic screening. They began their hunt for a surrogate, first starting with friends, but then expanding their search to Facebook groups dedicated to connecting surrogates with intended parents.
As a resident of West Palm Beach, Florida, Roman found the laws in the Sunshine State were friendly toward gestational surrogacy, as contracts were binding and enforceable. However, the surrogate must meet certain requirements, such as not being on government financial assistance.
“It’s to make sure that it’s not a guise for human trafficking, so you can’t be taking advantage of somebody who’s low income or bribing somebody to have your baby or in a sense, purchasing a child,” Roman said.
Last October, Roman welcomed her daughter, one of 4,000 children born by surrogates annually.
Gestational surrogacy, which is when a surrogate does not have a genetic link to the child, was first achieved in 1985. Since then, the practice of surrogacy has become hugely popular with Hollywood’s elites, including Kim Kardashian, Paris Hilton, Neil Patrick Harris, and Anderson Cooper. Between compensation, medical bills, and legal fees, surrogacy can cost between $100,000 to $200,000. But as shown in Roman’s case, using a surrogate is also becoming more mainstream.
In 2011, there were 2,841 embryo transfer cycles using gestational carriers. That number skyrocketed to 9,195 in 2019, but decreased to 7,786 in 2020, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The worldwide surrogacy market was valued at $14 billion in 2022, but Global Market Insights estimates it will grow to $129 billion by 2032. High demand for surrogates coincides with increasing rates of infertility, rise in same-sex family building, and more women delaying having children until later in life. Still, in some parts of the country the advocates are having to fight to have the practice protected.
Leah Potter is the program director of Family Choice Surrogacy, a surrogate agency in Fishers, Indiana. Her operation works with 30 to 40 parents and surrogates every year, ensuring surrogates are fully screened, and protections are set in place for parents and surrogates. Unlike Florida, Indiana statutes say, “It is against public policy to enforce any term of a surrogate agreement and that surrogate agreements formed after March 14, 1988, is void.”
Regardless, surrogacy is still being practiced in Indiana. Attorney Amanda Sapp, who specializes in surrogacy arrangements says the court has affirmed they are able to give legal parentage, meaning the genetic parents of the child are listed as the legal parents. Sapp will submit a pre-birth order which ensures the intended parents are the ones listed on the child’s initial birth certificate.
“I think that there is a small community here in Indiana, of doctors, agencies, counselors, therapists, attorneys, that have really sought to make sure that it does still happen,” Sapp said. “And it happens in an ethical, respectful manner to the families to the carriers to the whole process to make sure that everybody is still protected.”
Louisiana is the only state that prohibits compensated surrogacy contacts. Just recently, Michigan passed legislation ending the ban on compensated commercial surrogacy and enshrined safeguards for surrogates into law. The package of nine bills was passed by the legislature, with two Republicans joining Democrats to approve the bills in the state Senate. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) signed the legislation into law April 1, officially ending the ban.
While compensated surrogacy may be booming in the United States, it’s been banned by the vast majority of European countries. On Tuesday, the European Union Parliament voted in favor of adding the practice of surrogacy to the legal definition of human trafficking.
In January, Pope Francis called for surrogacy to be banned, saying a “child is always a gift and never the basis of a commercial contract.”
However, Potter says perceptions of surrogates and intended parents have often been misconstrued.
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“The women that I work with that are gestational carriers, these are educated women who want to give a gift,” Potter said. “They are compassionate, and they are strong-willed women.”
“There’s also a lot of misconception about intended parents. These are typically people who have gone through a lot of pain, and they just want a family.”
