Will Saletan, of the on-line magazine Slate, points out that more is at stake than money in cases of surrogacy fraud. A number of women are pregnant with someone elses child, but are not being paid to cover their expenses. Will some babies be aborted?

Surrogates aren't mercenaries," he writes. But they do need to be paid for their sacrifices. With every week that passes, they endure more of pregnancy's burdens. They submit to exams, tests, and other procedures. They take on serious medical risks. They forgo activities that might harm the fetus. They lose the ability to commute to and work at other jobs. They have bills to pay. At least one abandoned surrogate says she has received an eviction notice. If you stop paying your surrogate, she needs to quit and find another job, just like any other worker. But surrogacy isn't like any other job. The only way to quit a pregnancy is to abort it.

Apparently none of the surrogate mothers in these recent cases has aborted the children they are carrying for their brokers clients. Many "will not be reimbursed for their out-of-pocket expenses lost wages or even have their medical bills paid," says a lawyer who is involved in one of the cases, but "every single one of them has committed to moving forward." But what if they werent so generous? Its an unsettling thought. ~ Slate, Mar 24