"A central purpose of Canada’s 2004 law, the Assisted Human Reproduction Act, was to protect people such as Gil. Lawmakers feared exploitation of surrogates. But they fixated on one type of exploitation over all others—coercion through money—and they failed to fully anticipate the many other perils faced by people like Gil and the commissioning family in what is inevitably a delicate arrangement.
The law’s architects were primarily concerned that if wombs and gametes were allowed to be traded openly in the marketplace, vulnerable people would be enticed to monetize them. As a result, lawmakers decided that only individuals offering these things for free, out of the goodness of their hearts, could be trusted to be doing it without coercion.
They had in mind, where surrogacy was concerned, mostly sisters or cousins or nieces offering help within their own families. The idea of a stranger being contracted to carry a baby seemed to arouse a certain discomfort, not unlike what people often feel about paid sex work. A pregnancy was too intimate—too sacred—to sell. They couldn’t fathom that a sane woman would grow a child in her uterus only to relinquish it, let alone take money for doing so...
The Assisted Human Reproduction Act has been a spectacular failure."
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