COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES JUDICIARY COMMITTEE In re: House Judiciary Committee Public Hearing House Bills 570 and 776, Surrogate Parenting Verbatim record of hearing held at the Allegheny County Courthouse, Gold Room, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on Thursday, September 3, 1987 10;00 a.m. HON. H. WILLIAM DEWEESE, Chairman MEMBERS OF THE COMMITTEE Hon. William E. Baldwin Hon. Gerard A. Kosinski Eon. Jerry Birmelin Hon. Allen Kukovich Hon. Kevin Blaum Hon. Joseph A. Lashinger, Jr. Hon. Michael E. Bortner Hon. Nicholas Maiale Hon. Thomas R. Caltagirone Hon. David J. Mayernik Hon. Michael Dawida Hon. Paul McHale Hon. Chaka Fattah Hon. Terrence McVerry Hon. Michael C. Gruitza Hon. Nicholas B. Moehlmann Hon. Lois Sherman Hagarty Hon. Jeffrey E. Piccola Hon. David Heckler Hon. Robert D. Reber, Jr. Hon. Babette Josephs Hon. Christopher R. Wogan Hon. Robert C. Wright Prepared by: Susan L. Mears Adelman Reporters ADELMAN REPORTERS 231 Timothy Drive Gibsonia, Pennsylvania 15044 412-625-9101 or 1263 la ALSO PRESENT; Michael P. Edmiston, Esquire Chief Counsel for Committee John Connelly, Esquire Special Counsel for Committee Hon. Ivan Itkin Repre sentative Mary Wolly, Esqire Chief Counsel for Republicans Hon. Elaine Farmer Representative INDEX TO SPEAKERS SPEAKER: William Pierce National Adoption Center Washington, D.C. 4-14 Jan Sutton Surrogate Mother San Diego, California 15 - 20 William Handel Director, Center for Surrogate Parenting Beverly Hills, California 21 - 29 X-ynne Z. Cold-Bikin, Esquire ABA Liaison, National Legal Resource Center for Child Advocacy and Protection 54-70 Honorable Joseph Markosek Prime Sponsor House Bill 570 70 - 85 Noel P. Keane, Esquire Dearborn, Michigan 85 - 109 6ena Corea National Coalition Against Surrogacy in the United States 109 • 131 Robert H. Wettstein, H.D Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, University of Pittsburgh 131 - 143 Delia Stroud Chairman, Pennsylvania , Committee for Adoption 149 - 171 | Cynthia Mentser RESOLVE, Incorporated Pittsburgh Area Chapter 171 - 182 Howard Fetterhoff \ Executive Director of Pennsylvania Catholic Conference 183 - 197 INDEX TO SPEAKERS (CONTINUED) t SPEAKER: Charlene Amato Social Worker Montefiore Hospital Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 197 - 204 (The hearing commenced at 10:17 a.m.) CHAIRMAN DEWEESE: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the House Judiciary Committee hearing today. Our public hearing is on surrogacy. We are considering legislation proposed by Mr. Markosek from Allegheny County and Mr. Reber of Montgomery County. We are here to take testimony and to ask some questions. This is obviously a very multi-fueled and multiplexed subject. It is being debated in probably every State Legislature in America. As of a couple of weeks ago, there were at least 20 General Assemblies of the 50 in which legislation was -"• percolating. X am told by counsel that that has increased by several. We have what I consider to be an excellent group 1 i of men and women who will be testifying this morning and I t this afternoon. It will be incumbent upon all of us in the * Committee and on the staff and as participants to move'with some expedition. I would ask that all of you speak for • approximately ten minutes or less and then we will have questions for roughly ten minutes. Again, due to the fact that we have a significant number of people here, all of whom have gone out of their \ way. to visit with us, I do want to keep this process moving. I apologize for being late. Representative Reber did not get out of Philadelphia for almost an hour after his scheduled flight and I think that was emblematic of several other people including some of our staff people and some of our other members. I apologize for being dilatory but at this time, we will commence with William Pierce of the National Association — excuse me. National Adoption Center, Washington, D.C. Right before we do that, sir, I would like all of our members here to introduce themselves, and if we could start with Mike Dawida. REPRESENTATIVE DAWIDA: Mike Dawida, Allegheny County. REPRESENTATIVE REBER: Bob Reber, Montgomery County. \ REPRESENTATIVE BLAUM: Representative Kevin Blaura from the city of Wilkes-Barre. REPRESENTATIVE MCVERRY: Terry McVerry, Allegheny > County. REPRESENTATIVE ITKIN: Ivan Itkin, Pittsburgh. CHAIRMAN DEWEESE: Chief Counsel is Mike Edmiston and Special Counsel is John Connelly. With that as a '' preliminary remark. Bill Pierce* thank you very much for being with us. MR. FIERCE: Thank you, Chairman DeWeese and other members of the Judiciary Committee. The National Committee for Adoption appreciates being invited here today. Since you have a full day ahead of you, with many witnesses, I will try and condense a great deal of information that would take hours to talk with you about into my oral summary and provide you through the attachments of this testimony with additional information. I'll even skip the usual long-winded recitation of the accomplishments of our organization and merely mention that we represent some 130 agencies and 2,000 individual members in 45 States including 7 agency locations in Pennsyl­ vania, 3 of which are in the Pittsburgh area. Given today'8 witnesses on both sides of the surrogacy issue, there are some predictions I would like to make, some comments on one key reason why surrogacy is supposedly needed, some specific comments on House Bill 776 and some final recommendations. Let me begin by assuring you that although I will be making some harsh comments about some lawyers and others who are engaged in the surrogacy business, by no means am I lumping all lawyers together. The fact is that some of those working hardest to stop this inhumane industry are lawyers who know, like other professionals and most other people with just plain common sense, they know that this surrogacy business should never have gotten started and should be outlawed before it harms any more children, women, men, families, or social institutions. I predict you will hear the following sorts of claims today. First, you will hear as the Finding Section of 776 says that quote, due to the increased incidence of female infertility, many couples are turning to surrogate mothers to help them create families. Female and male infertility is increasing. But, the second part of the statement is where we differ. Surrogacy is no treatment for infertility anymore than adoption is. Secondly, there are a number of legal and appropriate alternatives for infertile couples to explore Including adoption. Third, even if there were no children to adopt, something I will comment on at length in a moment, we say that this would not justify Pennsylvania legalising an inherently inhumane practice like surrogacy. Desperation to achieve a good end such as parenting does not translate into social or legal endorsement for whatever means to that end may be required, whether those means include the supposedly high-tech intervention of surrogacy or the decidedly low-tech alternative of stealing someone else's child from a supermarket basket. I need to talk about statistics in -order to' address the bogus claim that since there are no babies to adopt, surrogacy should be legalized. The statistics come from the Adoption Factbook, one of our publications, and are for 1982, the last year for which there are any national adoption estimates. 4. i In Pennsylvania, in 1982, less than 1,000 healthy infants were adopted; 955 in all. That same year, the State had 161,909 live births and 64,060 abortions. That totals 225,999 pregnancies, not counting the miscarriages and still­ births. Or, looking at it in terms of so-called unwanted pregnancies, a phrase we object to because we know that every child is wanted by someone, there was about one adoption for ever 64 abortions. Checking comparable statistics from other States, and X have a table attached to our testimony, Pennsylvania did not do too badly in terms of adoptions. Some States do better, some do worse. Among the States that do worse are three States that have an interesting factor in common. Although we recognize there's no way one can prove that this factor is the sole reason for their relatively poor performance. The jurisdiction are D.C., Maryland »r*d Virginia — Maryland and Michigan. While Pennsylvania's adoption rate in 1982 was 3.06 percent of births to unmarried women, the other States' rates respectively were D.C., 1.84; Maryland, 2.04; Michigan, 1.68. The critical factor all three jurisdictions have in common is that they have laws which restrict the fees which adoptive parents can pay when they adopt a child. How might this restrict adoptions? In several ways, as my colleague, Jeff Rosenberg, pointed out in an item, quote, a law that would eliminate adoption, end quote, which appeared in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette on August 22, in that he and I discussed in a Family Law Reporter monograph, which is part of our attachments. I won't repeat those points now out of considera­ tion for our time, important as they are for domestic U.S. adoptions. X do need to mention that even adoptions from other countries may be hurt, and with them Pennsylvania residents by that law. In 1984, 434 children were brought in from other countries where counseling, room and board and transportation for biological or birth mothers is provided by the agency in the sending country and reimbursed by U.S. adoptive parents' fees and donations. That is the case for Korean adoptions which represent more than half of inter­ national adoptions by U.S. citizens, and probably at least half of foreign adoptions by Pennsylvania residents. While the Pennsylvania Supreme Court's ruling ostensibly affects only domestic adoption practice, it seems clear that if Pennsylvania law says it is not a good idea to pay for room, board, counseling, and transportation costs related to adoptions for a pregnant woman from Waynesburg, PA, who is placing her child for adoption.