Yes, that is “NOW” not “NOM,” speaking of headlines you don’t expect to see.
New Jersey governor Chris Christie just vetoed a bill that would have loosened the state’s restrictions and regulations on surrogate parenting. Kathleen Sloan, a member of the board of the National Organization for Women, issues a press release:
Women’s health and human rights advocates are popping champagne corks all over the country today. Legislation that would have allowed commercial surrogacy in the State of New Jersey with no protections for women who serve as surrogates and no regulation of the fertility industry was vetoed. Virtually written by surrogacy brokers, the blatancy of the commercial exploitation of women contained in this legislation is staggering in its cynicism.
She is also part of the “National Leadership Coalition Against Exploitation of Women by Use of Gestational Surrogacy Agreements,” which wrote in opposition to the bill:
In order to embrace any form of surrogacy, our culture would have to adopt two radical assumptions as morally acceptable:
1. That we should go back to a time when women’s role in society is viewed as one where they bear children for men and have no right to the custody of the children they bear; and
2. Mothers provide nothing of particular value.