ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the relationship of parent and child. Parental rights were not akin to property rights. Parents were charged with the care of their children only because of the latter's imperfectly developed faculties of reason. There are essentially some ways in which a woman may provide surrogacy services for a couple wishing to have a child. In the United States, courts have held that the surrogate mother and the biological father are the natural parents of such children. The surrogate might seem to deserve rights to the child given that she has labored more than the intended mother in the gestation and birth of the child. Parents are entitled to their children for the same reasons that they are entitled to anything that is a part of themselves. Thus, it is ultimately a belief in the notion of self-ownership or self-integrity that fuels our presumption in favor of a natural parent's entitlement to her child.
