Florida used to be known as the place where people come to retire.
Now it’s the place where common sense goes to die — and where extremist absurdism is the norm.
In the latest example, Florida’s scandal-soaked attorney general, James Uthmeier, decided to intervene in a surrogacy case in South Florida where everyone involved was happy — the new parents and the surrogate mother.
Uthmeier’s argument: Surrogacy is akin to “human trafficking.” And “slavery.”
Orlando Sentinel
Scott Maxwell is an Orlando Sentinel columnist.
The argument seems absurd on its face. But it’s really about setting a legal precedent that would help Uthmeier make a case against abortion. If he could advance the “personhood” argument (that embryos or fetuses are people) in a surrogacy case, it would help him attack abortion rights as well.
It’s legal gamesmanship that hurts everyday Floridians, many of whom turned to surrogacy after heartbreak.
They’re women like Marla Neufeld, a Fort Lauderdale attorney who suffered through five painful years of infertility and miscarriages before finally seeking a surrogate.
“Nobody wants to be in this position,” Neufeld said. “Nobody is doing this just for the fun of it.”
The surrogacy process was costly and complicated, but Neufeld and her husband have twin boys who are now 12. “I’m so blessed this process worked,” she said.
The affected women are also people like Ehren McMichael, a kindergarten teacher and Longwood mother of three who decided to become a surrogate after watching her mother slowly die of ALS. In those painful, final moments, McMichael had an epiphany: “What better way to grieve and honor my mother than to bring someone else into the world?”
So, through a service, she was able to help a couple she didn’t even know, one that had endured five miscarriages and two failed, costly in vitro fertilization attempts.
Uthmeier’s insertion into a South Florida case was sketchy from the get-go. The Tampa Bay Times, which exposed the legal maneuvering last week, reported that the case involves two men in France who found a Florida woman to be their surrogate. The judge who was being asked to sign off on transferring parental rights to the couple knew he had no legitimate reason not to do so. Everyone involved had followed the law.
But Judge Marlon Weiss apparently didn’t like the law. So the Times reported that Weiss, “going beyond what is typically required in such a case, suggested in his order that surrogacy may be unconstitutional. His ruling holds that if unborn children are entitled to personhood … those children cannot be subject to an ownership contract.”
That’s where it becomes pretty clear that this ruling wasn’t really about this family at all. This was a judge trying to set legal precedent for the anti-abortion movement — and trying to score himself a judicial promotion in the process. The Times reported that Weiss later submitted his unorthodox ruling as part of an application to DeSantis for an appellate position.
Uthmeier then started trying to intervene, with a spokeswoman issuing a statement that said: “The Attorney General is concerned about any case where a surrogacy company profits off the sale of children; it constitutes modern-day slavery, interferes with a mom’s parental rights, and the rights of the child.”
Uthmeier seems to be pouncing on the fact that some surrogates get paid — as if that’s some kind of sin. Well, the reason many get paid isn’t complicated. It can be tough to find a relative or friend who’s ready to spend nine months pregnant for a child they’ll never raise.
And also because the process can be draining — emotionally, physically and financially.
Neufeld, who went on to specialize in fertility and surrogate law after experiencing the process firsthand, stressed that surrogates take on “tremendous physical, emotional and logistical commitment in the process of helping build a family.” That’s why, she said: “Florida law appropriately recognizes this by permitting payment of the surrogate’s reasonable living, legal, medical, psychological and psychiatric expenses directly related” to the pregnancy.
It isn’t about enriching a surrogate, Neufeld said, but “ensuring that the surrogate is not financially disadvantaged for what she is putting her body and life through.”
Still, Uthmeier had an ideological war to wage.
A lawyer for the two fathers told the Times that Uthmeier — who was appointed to the post and now needs to win an election if he wants to keep it — is trying to use surrogacy cases as “political fodder for his campaign.”
If so, he may have gravely miscalculated.
Some legal experts say Uthmeier‘s legal push could imperil IVF and possibly even adoption if the state’s new argument is that any custodial transfer that also involves money is an act of human trafficking. And we’ve seen that kind of extremist legal argument backfire before.
Just two years ago, after an Alabama court issued a ruling that threatened the in vitro process, there was outrage across the political spectrum. So much so that Donald Trump told Alabama lawmakers to rush to protect IVF rights.
That bipartisan backlash happened for a simple reason: Most decent human beings believe parents struggling to have children deserve support. Not scorn or legal hurdles. And certainly not accusations that they’re involved in slavery or human trafficking.
Scott Maxwell is an Orlando Sentinel columnist. Contact him at smaxwell@orlandosentinel.com.