Annas comments on two 1986 court decisions involving surrogate motherhood: Surrogate Parenting Associates v. Kentucky and Smith v. Jones. In the first case, the Supreme Court of Kentucky ruled against the state's Attorney General in his attempt to revoke the charter of a company prompting surrogate arrangements. The court determined that the state's prohibition of child purchasing would not be violated if financial arrangements were worked out before conception and if the surrogate mother retained the right to cancel the contract up to the moment she relinquished her parental rights. In Smith v. Jones, a lower court judge in Michigan allowed an infertile ovum donor and her husband to be listed as the parents on a child's birth certificate, rather than the surrogate who had been artificially inseminated. Annas sees both decisions as accommodating the law to modern science, and as encouraging commercial surrogacy.
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George J. Annas (1986) studied this question.