Iowa court: Surrogate birth ma not the mom

The birth mother of an 18-monthold girl, paid as a surrogate to have a baby, is not legally the child’s parent, the Iowa Supreme Court ruled Friday in an emotional case concluding that surrogacy contracts can be enforced in the state. The ruling means the girl remains with the Cedar Rapids couple, the only parents she has known since leaving the hospital after birth. It was the first time the state’s highest court has weighed whether surrogacy contracts can be enforced.

Iowa, like most states, has no clear law on surrogacy parenting, but a 1989 law making it a felony to sell an individual to another person specifically exempts surrogate arrangements.

Banning gestational surrogacy agreements “would deprive infertile couples of perhaps the only way to raise their own biological children and would limit the contractual rights of willing surrogates,” the court said in an opinion authored by Justice Thomas Waterman.

The case centered on Paul and Chantele Montover, who agreed to pay a Muscatine woman $13,000 to carry a baby for them.

The woman, identified only as T.B., was impregnated with an egg from an unknown donor and Paul Montover’s sperm. She had twins prematurely on Aug. 31, 2016, but one baby died.

The surviving baby became the center of a legal dispute after the birth mother decided she wanted to keep the infant.