At the council's request, sponsoring Sen. Lyle Hillyard agreed to add mandatory counseling and a 21-year-old age minimum to a raft of requirements that both surrogates and intended parents would have to meet - safeguards not required of Utah's adoption industry. The Logan Republican says he is open to any suggestion for making this unique path to parenthood safe.
But the adoption council isn't satisfied and will continue pressing lawmakers to strike an allowance of "reasonable" payment for surrogates.
"How do you put a price on human life?" asked council President Susan Egbert, who wants gestational surrogacy to be treated like adoption - a charitable arrangement where payment is limited to reimbursement for a birth mother's expenses, such as food, clothing and transportation.
A gestational surrogate is not genetically related to the child she carries. She instead is implanted with an embryo created through in vitro fertilization - sperm and egg mixed in a petri dish.
A House committee on Monday unanimously endorsed Senate Bill 14, sending the Senate-approved measure to the full House for debate.
Proponents of SB14 say it already is one of the most restrictive in the country, limiting surrogacy to married Utah couples who are proven infertile. Surrogates must be financially stable - they can't be on welfare - and must have previously carried and delivered a baby. Those criteria must be met before a court could approve their surrogacy contracts.
The bill's supporters suspect adoption agencies are more interested in guarding their profits than promoting best practices.
"Adoption agencies stand to lose clients. When they're screaming about morals, they're really screaming about money," said Shirley Zager, president of the Illinois-based Organization of Parents Through Surrogacy.
Egbert says the council isn't categorically opposed to surrogacy. She acknowledged some adoption agencies overcharge parents and slip money to birth mothers in the form of "financial aid."
But Egbert believes surrogacy agencies can learn from her industry's mistakes.
While Utah courts finalize about 2,000 adoptions annually, doctors predict about one dozen surrogate births in the state each year if the practice is legalized.
Zager and a Utah surrogate, however, stress the two paths to parenthood are distinct and should be governed as such.
"Surrogacy is planned pre-conception. Surrogates aren't paid to give someone a baby, they're paid to carry a child. And in most cases, that child is related to the intended father and mother," Zager says.
Crystal Young, a 27-year-old Payson woman now 16 weeks pregnant with twins belonging to a Japanese couple, says money didn't draw her to surrogacy. It was the dream of providing the "ultimate gift" to couples struggling with infertility.
"I can't imagine a doctor telling me, 'I'm sorry, you can't have children,' " says Young, a full-time accountant and single mother.
She says under her contract she will receive less than $18,000, which is paid in installments and intended chiefly to reimburse her expenses.
"You get paid taking time off work for doctor's visits. And you have to provide receipts for your expenses, such as maternity clothes," Young says.
Young, featured in a January series in The Salt Lake Tribune, is still waiting to see whether SB14 becomes law. Utah's existing law - which bans paid surrogacy - would force her to deliver in Reno, Nev., take more time off work and pull her son, Jordan, out of school temporarily.
But the bonding with the Takahashis, awaiting their first children, motivates her. "Just seeing the [Takahashi's] faces when I hand them that baby," she said, "makes it all worth while."
kstewart@sltrib.com
