Last Thursday the New Jersey Supreme Court expanded on a previous case in a decision I hope will set precedent for other states and, hopefully, the nation as a whole. I am talking of the “Baby M” case which dealt with surrogacy.

If you’ve been living in a hick town worse than DeKalb for the past couple of years, let me just gloss over a few of the major points for you.

The Sterns are a well-to-do, infertile couple who desperately wanted a baby. Hence, they hired Mary Beth Whitehead and had her artificially inseminated with Mr. Stern’s sperm. They paid her a fee for the service, but in the end she decided she loved the child and wanted to keep it. A child custody battle ensued. Eventually the New Jersey Supreme Court awarded the child to the Sterns.

Now the court has reviewed its first decision and decided surrogacy is indeed “bad public policy,” and even though they awarded custody to the baby’s natural father and his wife, hiring a surrogate mother amounts to illegal “baby selling.”

I would have to agree.

My major concern with surrogacy has to do directly with the idea of a “payment.” It seems so obvious to me that surrogacy is simply a “nice-nice” word for baby selling. Of course, advocates of surrogacy beg to disagree and say the fee given to the surrogate mother is simply for her “time.”

Give me a break. Saying you are giving a financial payment for “services rendered” is merely a euphemism. It’s like when we say someone “passed away” instead of “died.” Or “I was laid off” instead of “I was fired.” Or calling a “nuclear missile” a “peace maker.” Euphemisms are a way of giving a pleasant connotation to something really unpleasant. It’s a way to get public approval. We all do it. And that is exactly what advocates are doing in their stance on surrogacy.

In fact, if the fee was truly for the surrogate mother’s “time” and not for the “actual baby,” it seems to follow that if a surrogate mother carried a baby full term, but then delivered a stillborn baby, she would still get her full payment, right?

Wrong. If a baby is stillborn, the surrogate mother is given a portion of the complete fee. This just substantiates the stance that the payment is for the baby and not for anybody’s “time.”

Surrogacy also has a disturbing element concerning the basic human dignity of women and motherhood. It is not out of the question that eventually a certain pool of women could be lowered to the level of “breeding stock” to supply all the well-to-do, childless couples in the world with that bouncing bundle of joy. But at whose expense? And who will be preyed upon to fulfill this role of “breeding stock?” My guess is that it is going to be poor women.

And what about the whole idea of motherhood? The least we can say is surrogacy cheapens it. And the children? How will this affect them? Not too well, I presume. This whole idea of surrogacy reduces children to a commodity that can bought and sold.

But, before you think me too callous, let me just say I do understand the agony a childless couple must feel and I do understand the slap-in-the-face traditional adoption agencies give them when they are placed on a waiting list and told they might get a baby around the year 2010.

But exploiting women and selling babies is just not the answer.

Yes, states and even the federal government can ban surrogacy. At least 33 states have already introduced legislation to regulate or abolish surrogacy. Only Louisiana has banned the enforcement of the surrogate contract. Britain has outlawed it and West Germany may soon follow suit.

I look forward to seeing what kind of stance the United States will take on the issue of surrogacy and who exactly that stance will benefit in the long run.