The Louisiana Legislature recently passed a bill that threatened to transform the state into our version of India–a country in which destitute and desperate women are exploited for their gestational capacities by a surrogacy industry and its foreign customers (discussed here previously).
Good news: Governor Jindal has vetoed.
From the Business Report story:
Jindal vetoed a bill that would have set a new legal and regulatory framework for surrogacy births in the state. The surrogacy bill was one of the more contentious bills of the session because religious groups raised ethical and moral concerns. Louisiana law currently has few regulations governing surrogacy.
This is a quote from Jindal’s Veto Message, as reported by The Advocate:
Creating a state sanctioned regulatory structure for contracts pertaining to the birth of children has a profound impact on the traditional beginnings of the family and is an important topic worthy of heightened scrutiny and consensus.
To say the least. For example, I would be very interested in studies analyzing the impact of surrogacy on adoption.
CLICK LIKE IF YOU’RE PRO-LIFE!
In any event, I am utterly opposed to surrogacy-for-hire. As the old rock song had it, “You can’t always get what you want.” In our times the living human body and its biological parts and functions are being reduced to the status of natural resources for the well-off to exploit, plunder, buy, and rent. Political actions that blunt this objectification of humanity are to be applauded–including Jindal’s veto.
LifeNews.com Note: Wesley J. Smith, J.D., is a special consultant to the Center for Bioethics and Culture and a bioethics attorney who blogs at Human Exceptionalism.
