


	It also seems that surrogacy is embraced by a growing portion of society. There are open discussion fora on the Internet for both surrogates and those who are researching the process. There are also children’s books on the subject, including Hope and Will Have a Baby and The Kangaroo Pouch. These books can be used by both children within a family who will receive children from a surrogate, as well as for biological children of a surrogate, in order to understand why the baby that is growing in their mother’s womb is not coming home to the family after it is born. 


Although their situation is public due to their occupations as actors and their notoriety as celebrities, the case of Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick seems to be typical of a couple who uses a surrogate: for one reason or another, she is unable to conceive, or perhaps her eggs or his sperm were deemed unusable by their fertility specialist or physician. They chose to engage a surrogate’s services in order to add to their family. 


	An interesting point in this case is the jurisdiction in question. Parker and Broderick are residents of New York, where contracts for surrogacy are held as “void, unenforceable and contrary to public policy” and if discovered, can carry fines of up to $500 for the parties to the contract and up to $10,000 for any agency arranging the surrogacy for profit. The surrogate’s residency is unknown, as are the particular circumstances of the surrogacy arrangement. As Parker and Broderick are both well-known actors, and appear to have considerable net worth, it would seem they would have the wherewithal to absorb a fine of $500. While $10,000 is a comparatively large sum for an agency to pay, Parker and Broderick may have decided to take the risk of the fine, as the amount it may not be as dear to them as it might be to a typical American middle-class couple. The New York law also prohibits civil or criminal penalty for parties to an uncompensated surrogacy contract.  It is entirely possible that the couple contracted with an uncompensated surrogate. 


	It is also possible that the surrogate is in another state, or that the contract was executed in a more surrogate-friendly jurisdiction in order to avoid the potential penalties listed above. Depending upon the situation, the surrogate may be able to be compensated, and the intended parents may even have a pre-birth order for the birth certificate when the twins are born. The outcome of this case is yet to be seen; at the time of this writing, the twin girls carried by the Parker-Broderick surrogate are expected sometime in the summer of 2009. 


There is no clear-cut solution to the issue of surrogacy in America. Proponents of surrogacy say there is no objectification of a woman because she is using her body in a way that is considered natural, and that the decision to become pregnant via surrogacy is not one that can be made without the assent of the surrogate. 