As you may have heard, Jimmy Fallon, who is slated to replace Jay Leno on The Tonight Show in 2014, recently had a baby via surrogacy. When a celebrity uses a surrogate, it tends to make headlines. But as NBC reports, “More couples, and not just celebrities, are turning to surrogacy.”

Surrogacy, however, is not legal everywhere. Moves were made this year to legalize surrogacy in New Jersey and Louisiana. We worked with coalitions in both states to oppose these initiatives. While bills passed through both states’ legislatures, we are glad to be able to report that Governors Christie and Jindal vetoed the measures. Victory!

In Washington, D.C., the city council is currently debating a bill, The Surrogacy Parenting Agreement Act of 2013, that would legalize the practice in the district.

D.C.-based, nationally syndicated columnist Kathryn Jean Lopez this week addresses the topic of surrogacy head-on. It is well worth your time to read it in full. Here are a few excerpts to whet your appetite:

While D.C. is not known to be a bastion of clear thinking and lawmaking, it is currently a model on the topic of surrogacy, prohibiting the commercialization of wombs in a country where many states have made a mess of human dignity.

“Surrogacy takes something as natural as a pregnant woman nurturing her unborn child and turns it into an unnatural contractual, commercialized endeavor,” Jennifer Lahl, a nurse who serves as president of the Center for Bioethics and Culture, said in testimony this June before the District of Columbia’s city council. “It opens the door for all sorts of exploitation.”

. . .

As with other contentious issues that divide us, our embrace of third-party reproductive arrangements relies on scientific advances that deny natural arrangements that have served civilization well.

. . .

Women deserve so much better than the multifaceted lies we are told today.

Please do take the time to read the whole thing.

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