Stop CA SB 729: Expanding Access to Surrogacy
Women’s sexual labor is not for sale!
A new bill currently in the California state senate would make it easier for individuals to use a woman for surrogacy by forcing healthcare plans to offer coverage for surrogacy as “infertility” treatment. The bill also expands the definition of “infertility” to include gay men, following the recent pattern of branding attempting to brand surrogacy as a “gay rights issue.”
SB 729, “Health care coverage: treatment for infertility and fertility services,” was introduced by state Senator Menjivar and co-authored by Senator Scott Wiener. The bill repeals a previous exemption for “in vitro fertilization” from the health care coverage mandate and requires all health care plans to provide coverage for a “surrogate that enables an intended recipient to become a parent.”
The bill also redefines “infertility” to include “A person’s inability to reproduce either as an individual or with their partner without medical intervention.” This change appears to be primarily motivated to grant gay men access to health care coverage for surrogacy, which would necessarily increase access to surrogacy since it is normally prohibitively expensive even for middle-class families.
Surrogacy is a form of commercial sexual exploitation which perpetuates the idea that women's bodies are objects to be used for the benefit of others. It commodifies the reproductive capacities of women, reducing them to vessels for gestation and childbirth, while denying them agency and control over their own bodies.
These pregnancies are always considered high-risk because it involves IVF and "alien" genetic material (the baby is not biologically related to the birth mother). Surrogates are pumped full of fertility drugs which may be linked to higher rates of cancer and, once under contract, surrogate women do not have full bodily autonomy. Surrogacies have higher rates of C-sections, which are more dangerous than natural birth.
Take Action! Tell Gov. Newsom to Stop SB 729: “Health care coverage: treatment for infertility and fertility services.”
The surrogacy industry has latched onto the gay rights movement to give "progressive" cover to its systematic human rights abuses against women. But no person should have the right to purchase access to a woman's sexual labor - regardless of their own ability to conceive or not.
Write to California Governor Gavin Newsom and ask him to veto SB 729!
