Alternatives to Infertility: Is Surrogacy the Answer?. Lita L Schwartz. 1991. 200p. Brunner-Mazel.

Baby M & Surrogate Motherhood: A Resource Guide. Jim Buchanan. 1987. 17p. Vance Biblios.

Baby M Case: A Collection of the Complete Trial Transcripts. Sara Robbins. 1988. 6 vols. William S Hein & Co. The legal researcher in this complicated area will find this unique collection an invaluable resource in gaining an understanding of the issues involved.

Birth Mother: America’s First Legal Surrogate Mother Tells the Story of Her Change of Heart. Elizabeth Kane (pseud). 1988. HBJ. From Library Journal: In 1980 Kane, a married mother of three, delivered literallyon a contractual promise and became America’s first surrogate mother. Her diary-like narrative supposedly fulfills another pledge: to present a “story of determination to survive” the trauma of giving up her son. Instead, the author mainly offers an expurgated version of her pregnancy. Fiction techniques compromise her aim for honesty, and while the short epilogue sufficiently describes Kane’s “sisterly” support of Mary Beth Whitehead (of Baby M fame) and rejects surrogacy, it merely skims over the reasons for Kane’s own emotional fallout, e.g., a shaky marriage, learning-disabled child, depression. Still, this is a unique contribution to the literature. — Janice Arenofsky, formerly with Arizona State Lib., Phoenix; Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Birth Power: The Case For Surrogacy. Carmel Shalev. 1989. 224p. Yale University Press. Though impressively argued, ’Birth Power’ may not persuade everyone to embrace Ms. Shalev’s brave new world of contract reproduction. It’s true that selling reproductive services to people who want to become responsible nurturing parents is not the moral equivalent of selling babies into bondage. And it’s possible that in a relentlessly capitalist society, where ’beyond price’ mayalso mean ’without value,’ putting a price tag on such intimate services as gestation may inspire respect, rather than conceal contempt, for the female capacity to give birth. But, perhaps inevitably, Ms. Shalev does not fully answer all of the fundamental questions she raises. Like Baby M’s mother, her bookpromises more than it ultimately delivers. — Mary Ellen Gale, The New York Times Book Review. Copyright 1983 The H.W. Wilson Company. All rights reserved.

Checklist on the Law of Surrogacy. Mark A Johnson. 1996. 44p. [Tapestry].

Delivering Hope: The Extraordinary Journey of a Surrogate Mom. Pamela MacPhee. 2009. 217p. HeartSet, Inc. An intimate memoir of courage and sacrifice in a cousin’s bid to deliver her cousin and his wife the gift of a child. Honest, touching and sprinkled with humorous and awkward moments, it is a story of giving, of hope and of triumph over adversity. Struck by cancer, Lauren cannot carry a baby, but, with embryos frozen in storage, she and her husband, Henry, can still have a child of their own with the help of a surrogate mom. Wishing to offer her cousin hope in the face of devastating infertility, Pamela MacPhee volunteers to be their surrogate. After navigating the psychological evaluations, doctor examinations, and legal necessities of surrogacy, MacPhee begins a challenging emotional and physical journey. It all becomes real on the day she watches Lauren and Henry stand silently in awe, listening to a rapid pounding ultrasound heartbeat that confirms a pregnancy.

Ethics of Commercial Surrogate Motherhood, The: Brave New Families?. Scott B Rae. 1993. 192p. Greenwood. This study addresses the two most controversial issues in surrogate motherhood: the commercial aspect of the practice and the issue of parental rights. After setting the legal and moral backdrop of procreative liberty in general, Rae argues that commercial surrogacy is the moral equivalent of baby-selling and should be prohibited. Add to this the potential for exploitation of the surrogate in practices that are already in motion and it is not hard to see the potential for harm to the parties involved. The book concludes with a survey of state and international law to date on surrogacy and a sample legislative proposal that could be adopted by states that are currently deliberating the issues. The commercial aspect of surrogacy makes it a potentially profitable business, not only for the surrogates but also for the brokers who facilitate the arrangements. This book promotes careful forethought, a reconsideration of definitions of parenthood, and a thorough examination of cases past and pending.

Families With a Difference: Varieties of Surrogate Parenthood. Michael & Heather Humphreys. 1988. 192p. Routledge Chapman & Hall (Canada).

Gift of a Child, The. Mary Ann Thompson. 2002. 325p. Inner Ocean Publishing. Thousands of women who want to bear children but cannot, endure tremendous emotional, physical, and financial costs when they explore alternative approaches. This is the heartening story of two women who chose a very personal option. The author, a former protestant minister married to a physicist, decides to bear a child for her longtime friend Alycia, who is infertile. She writes movingly about her pregnancy and the child’s birth, but is quite unprepared for the distancing of the couples, which is compounded by the heart-wrenching sense of loss at giving up her newborn daughter. What had begun with the good intentions of two compassionate women becomes a moral and spiritual crisis for both mothers. This crisis is resolved a year later in an astonishing encounter in which they explore their profoundly complex emotions. They come to accept each other’s journey and celebrate the love of their daughter. An inspiring story of a wondrous gift of love and compassion, told with clear-eyed, simple eloquence, by an author uniquely qualified to examine the moral and spiritual issues.

Have Womb, Will Travel: The True Story of an Intercontinental Surrogacy. Renée van Oostveen. 2008. 340p. Lingomatics Ltd. Renée van Oostveen had finally met the man of her dreams at 40 and wanted to start a family right away. But things did not all go as expected. Unable to conceive naturally, the couple tried in vitro fertilization, ten times with her own eggs (rsulting in two miscarriages), and six times with donor eggs (resulting in two more miscarriages. With her Dutch family urging her to quit, and pressure from her Israeli in-laws for grandchildren, Renée answered an internet ad, soliciting a complete stranger in a far away country to be a surrogate mother. This is the true story of two women—Renée in Tel Aviv, Israel, and Jennefer in rural Montana—who get to know each other by writing emails, slowly graduating to making telephone calls and then finally meeting. Their surrogacy attempts take them to Kiev, Israel, Holland and the United States and shows the contrasting lifestyles of both women as well as that of the Ukraine. It is sometimes very emotional as the pendulum swings between hope and desperation. However, all the organization, coordination, medication and disappointments do not make them lose their cool or their sense of humor.

Love Child: Our Surrogate Baby. Rona Walker. 1990. 183p. Bloomsbury (London). Story of a couple’s turning to surrogacy after the death of their premature child and the wife’s hysterectomy.

Matter of Trust, A: The Guide to Gestational Surrogacy. Gail Dutton. 1997. 217p. Clouds Publishing. Published in 1997, this book is a step-by-step guide to surrogate parenting. It discusses finding and working with a surrogate, what a surrogate program provides, what to include in the contracts, recommended testing for potential surrogates, detailed costs for each item related to surrogacy, the medical procedure, medications and their side effects, embryo cryopreservation, demographics of surrogates and surrogate couples and the effects of surrogacy upon children. One chapter outlines the laws in U.S. states and in Israel, South Africa, Canada, the United Kingdom, Denmark, Germany, France, Switzerland, New Zealand, Australia, Hong Kong, Japan and Russia. Jewish law also is discussed, along with the views of several Christian denominations and other religions regarding surogacy. About the Author: Gail Dutton and her husband are the parents of identical twin boys, born thanks to gestational surrogacy. She is the author of some 500 science and business articles for U.S. magazines. This is her first book.

Mother’s Story, A. Mary Beth Whitehead & L Schwartz-Nobel. 1989. 220p. St Martin’s Press. Mary Beth Whitehead never expected to become a household name and media figure when she decided to help a childless couple by signing a surrogacy contract. But when Mary Beth realized that she could not give her baby away and refused to do so, she literally became an object of public contempt. Public opinion was formed to a large extent by the behavior of the trial judge and the coverage of the case by the press, which created the perception of Mary Beth as an unfit, hysterical, and manipulative mother and the Sterns as an educated, affluent couple who would be ideal parents. But there is another side to the story.

Regulating the Baby Makers: From Baby M to the Present, a Bibliography. Jim Buchanan. 1991. 28p. Vance Biblios.

Research Guide: Surrogate Motherhood. Kathleen Bach. 1988. 46p. William S Hein & Co. A survey of existing law in the various states including many key terms to use in indexes and computerized databases.

Sacred Bond: The Legacy of Baby M. Phyllis Chesler. 212p. Times Books. In 1985, Mary Beth Whitehead signed a contract agreeing to give birth to a baby for William and Elizabeth Stern in return for a payment of $10,000. After ’Baby M’ was born, Mary Beth changed her mind. She wanted to keep the baby. Her decsision led to a court battle which made headlines across the world. Phyllis Chesler analyses the impact of the legal, psychological and ethical problems this landmark case threw into such sharp relief. What makes a mother—or father—a fit parent, and who decides? Does the standard surrogate-mother contract constitute baby-selling? Should it be abolished? Who can determine a child’s best interests? Is the blood-tie significant for a child and a parent? Does surrogacy exploit women? With the striking lucidity which has become her trademark, Phyllis Chesler tackles the issues raised by the Baby M case, issues at the forefront of contemporary ethical debate.

Standing in Two Places: A New Landscape of Motherhood. Ashley Dyson. 2009. 168p. Aberdeen Bay. Standing in Two Places is a moving memoir that tells the story of a journey through the controversial practice of surrogacy. Ashley Dyson is the intended mother who, after enthusiastically entering a surrogacy arrangement with Norah, suddenly finds herself stuck in a sort of motherhood purgatory: she is a mother of a three-year-old daughter and an unpregnant mother-to-be of a baby growing inside the womb of another woman four states away. She and Norah have formed a close friendship, but they are also business partners, the ’business’ being carrying Ashley’s baby. There is the traditional role of ’mother’ and there is this new, ambiguous role of ’intended mother,’ which for Ashley feels more like the father’s role, the man who goes about his business for nine months then—Voila!—a baby appears in his arms. Ashley finds herself in the middle of what she calls “an actual transition in human evolution,” where she’s in the passenger seat of a car, driven by a friend who also happens to be five months pregnant with her baby. This is motherhood with a twist, and it is complicated. With honesty, humor, and heartbreaking insight Ashley shares her experience of navigating through this new landscape with no guidebook, no map. “My generation and our children are the subjects of this reproductive revolution, how we live through it must be figured out on a trial and error basis,” Ashley writes. And like motherhood, which demands responsibility and love, Ashley is determined to figure it out, thereby shedding light and possibility on an uncharted place. In the end, Standing in Two Places is a memoir about love. If not for love, what other reason is there to willingly throw oneself headlonginto the unknown?

Surrogate Motherhood. Martha A Field. 1988. 224p. Harvard University Press. As Field explains so vividly, the problem is not an absence of law but anexcess of available law including contract law, criminal laws against baby selling, adoption laws, laws governing the rights of sperm donors, or those establishing the rights of unmarried biological parents. Given the flexibility ofthose various bodies of law, Field notes that any result could be supported depending upon the desires of society. She, however, would propose that such surrogacy contracts be legal but unenforceable. That is, should the surrogate mother decide to keep the child, she would have the option of withdrawing fromthe contract. In this excellent work Field suggests the panoply of responsesfrom which we as a society will choose, and she proposes a solution that seems to make a great deal of sense. Excellent notes and bibliography. — M.W. Bowers, Choice. Copyright 1983 The H.W. Wilson Company. All rights reserved.

Surrogate Motherhood: Conception in the Heart. Helena Ragone. 1994. 215p. Westview. Ever since the Baby M case, the public has been fascinated with the continuing phenomenon of surrogate motherhood. The Baby M case raised, and left unanswered, many questions about what constitutes motherhood, fatherhood, family, reproduction, and kinship. What do the surrogates, commissioning couples, program directors, and attending professionals think and feel about surrogacy? How and when are the children told of their birth origins? How do surrogate mother programs select a surrogate? What psychological tests are administered? Surrogate Motherhood: Conception in the Heart examines the phenomenon of surrogate motherhood in depth, through the unique perspective of a cultural anthropologist, providing us with answers to these and other questions in a richly textured ethnography. Included in the book are actual surrogate and couple evaluation forms completed by clinical psychologists, confidential surrogate mother information sheets, and the legal contract used by one of the programs. To date, thousands of surrogate-assisted births have taken place, but never before have the experiences of the participants and program staff been explored in such detail. Participants who have never before spoken publicly about their involvement in surrogacy here speak out, and their statements are startling and intriguing. Surrogate mothers and commissioning couples who have suffered the pain of infertility open up their hearts to illuminate the compelling world of surrogacy in which many of our assumptions about nurturance, family, and kinship are reconfigured.

Surrogate Motherhood: Politics & Privacy. Larry Gostin, ed. 1990. 320p. Indiana University Press. This book is an important addition to the public discussion of surrogate motherhood. The essays in this collection, originally published as a special issue of the journal Law, Medicine, and Health Car, examine the legal, ethical, civil liberties, women’s autonomy, and public health aspects of the surrogacy debate.

Surrogate Motherhood, Women’s Rights & the Working Class. Cindy Jaquith. 1988. 23p. Pathfinder. Examines how “surrogate mother” contracts exploit children and women; rights and responsibilities in child raising; and how these questions relate to the working-class struggle for economic justice and social progress.

Surrogate Parenting. Amy Z Overvold. 1988. 224p. Pharos Books.

Surrogate Parenting: An Annotated Review of the Literature. Sara Robbins. 1984. 40p. Vantage Info.

Surrogate Parenting Contract Legislation Enacted: 1987, 1988 & 1989. 1990. 10p. Natl Conf State Legis.

Surrogates & Other Mothers: The Debate Over Assisted Reproduction. Ruth Macklin. 1994. 240p. Temple University Press. This fascinating book follows the story of a fictitious couple and their personal investigation into infertility, adoption, and surrogacy. Macklin (Mortal Choices), a professor of bioethics at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, uses a narrative format to illustrate the feelings and obstacles the couple encounter as they pursue their quest to have a baby. Various events, which are based on actual cases, are used to portray medical, legal, religious, feminist, and ethical perspectives on surrogacy and assisted reproduction. Though the presentation may seem a bit melodramatic, the book offers a great deal of information and does an excellent job of conveying the emotions involved with these issues. Unfortunately, the book strays from an examination of surrogacy into lengthy discussions of premenstrual syndrome and AIDS. These weighty topics deserve their own in-depth analysis, and their inclusion here distracts the reader from the main topic. — Tina Neville, Univ. of South Florida at St. Petersburg Lib., Library Journal