Iowa court upholds enforceability of surrogacy contracts
By Associated Press,
Omaha World-Herald
| 02. 18. 2018
DES MOINES (AP) — The birth mother of an 18-month-old girl who agreed to be paid as a surrogate to have the baby, is not legally the child’s parent, the Iowa Supreme Court ruled Friday in an emotional case that concluded surrogacy contracts can be enforced in Iowa.
The ruling means the girl remains with the Cedar Rapids couple, the only parents she has known since leaving the hospital after birth.
It was the first time the state’s highest court has weighed whether surrogacy contracts can be enforced.
But the fight isn’t over. The birth mother plans to appeal part of the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court.
“I no longer believe that surrogacy contracts should be entered into,” said the woman identified in court documents only as T.B., in a statement provided by her attorney. “Every child should have a mother and an essential part of the mother-child relationship is the role of pregnancy and the bonding that takes place during it. Children should not be sold.”
The woman said she has taken no money for bearing the...
Related Articles
By Staff, National Women's Law Center | 08.13.2025
INTRODUCTION
Baby bonuses. Motherhood medals. Fertility tracking. You may have heard of these policy proposals as solutions from the Trump administration to help encourage women to have more children.
Besides falling short of ensuring that people have what they need...
By Zusha Elinson, The Wall Street Journal | 08.12.2025
BERKELEY, Calif.—Tsvi Benson-Tilsen, a mathematician, spent seven years researching how to keep an advanced form of artificial intelligence from destroying humanity before he concluded that stopping it wasn’t possible—at least anytime soon.
Now, he’s turned his considerable brainpower to promoting...
By Cade Metz, The New York Times | 08.04.2025
Image by Mike MacKenzie / CC BY 2.0
In downtown Berkeley, an old hotel has become a temple to the pursuit of artificial intelligence and the future of humanity. Its name is Lighthaven.
Covering much of a city block, this...
By Jared Whitlock, Endpoints News | 07.15.2025
Patient groups face a harder and unpredictable path going state-by-state to boost screening for rare but treatable conditions after the Trump administration disbanded a federal advisory committee on newborn screening.
In April, the Advisory Committee on Heritable Disorders in Newborns...
