Reporter documents egg donation journey
June 3, 2014The search for my egg donor on Katie Couric show this week
June 12, 2014On the second go around, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal has vetoed a bill having to do with legal surrogacy births in the pelican state.
And I for one am relieved he vetoed this bill once more. But it’s for different reasons I will share at the end.
In The Times Picayune, reporter Emily Lane writes in her article, “The veto comes after backers of the legislation made compromises with conservative Christian groups to put in it a posture Jindal could support.” Lane goes on to report, “Rep. Joe Lopinto, R-Metairie, sponsored the legislation, which allows couples and a woman to enter into a contractual surrogacy birth relationship. Currently, no one who sets up a contract governing a surrogacy in Louisiana can get it enforced in local courts.”
When Lopinto presented the bill the first time, objections from conservative groups such as Christians and Catholics voiced concerns that it was too lenient. The amended version, House Bill 187, was meant to satisfy the conservative group – but it didn’t satisfy all of them.
A portion of Jindal’s vetoed message states, “However, despite the good intentions and hard efforts of the author, this legislation still raises concerns for many in the pro-life community.”
Some Louisiana citizens who opposed the bill did so for other reasons such as citing House Bill 187 as ridiculous, claimed surrogacy is a business contract which should not be overseen by state law, and others called it narrowly written.
I was relieved of this veto, because for me, it was more of a “Republican-I-support-right-to-life-and-marriage-between-a-man-and-a-woman” bill than it had to do with surrogacy.