Doe v. Attorney General.

Abstract

In affirmation of a lower court decision, the Michigan appellate court ruled that a private contract for surrogate motherhood was not permitted because it would in effect change the state's adoption code to permit the payment of money for adoption. Such an arrangement was not justified by a constitutional right to privacy. In this instance, a husband and wife who were incapable of having children had entered into an agreement with an unrelated woman that she would act as a surrogate mother, conceiving the husband's biological child by means of artificial insemination. The code did not actually prevent the parties from having the child as planned, but only from exchanging money for it.