Here's a subject that doesn't appear, but ought to, on the questionnaires sent to candidates for the Pennsylvania Legislature:

		Sally Kalson is a Post-Gazette columnist (skalson@post-gazette.com, 412-263-1610).

Should the state have laws governing surrogate mother arrangements so that everyone understands the rules before a pregnancy results?

Should the children born of these arrangements be considered human beings with certain inalienable rights that cannot be traded away? Or should they be viewed as property to be treated as their owners desire?

If a surrogacy contract is breached and winds up in court, should judges consider the case like any other contract violation -- a collapsed real estate deal, for example -- or does the child's need for security and stability dictate different standards?

If the standards ought to be different, should presiding judges know what those standards are before the courtroom doors open? Or should they be flying blind through a blizzard of competing claims, making it up as they go and reversing each other up the chain of appeals?

And finally, should surrogacy agreements be permitted across state lines, setting up a situation where conflicting laws and/or judicial interpretations may turn children into ping-pong balls?

If the recent removal of triplets from the surrogate mother who bore and raised them to the age of 2 1/2 doesn't prove the need for a legal framework governing surrogacy arrangements, then nothing will.

And if recent history shows anything, it's that ignoring the issue won't make it go away.

The case in point involves a Pennsylvania woman who accepted $20,000 to bear the biological children of an unmarried, 64-year-old man from Ohio. His sperm was used to fertilize eggs donated by another woman from Texas, which were then implanted in the surrogate's womb. After their births, the father didn't come for a week to collect the children, so the hospital let the surrogate mother take them home.

A state court judge awarded her custody on the grounds that she would make the better parent, but an appeals court reversed that ruling on the grounds that she had no legal claim to the children. The triplets were given over to their father. She has said she will appeal.

All of this could have been avoided if the Legislature had enacted the Gestational Agreement section of the Uniform Parentage Act, a model act proposed by the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws in Chicago. The agreement covers the rights of children and delineates their legal relationship with the adults involved, as well as parental rights and responsibilities of sperm and egg donors.

Fewer than half the states have passed the act since its creation in 1973, and six have passed its most recent version. Pennsylvania is not among either group.

At least one state lawmaker, Sen. Jane Earll, R-Erie, thinks the issue should be addressed. Her concern is laudable, but the bill she has proposed is too restrictive -- far more so than the Uniform Act.

The major flaw of Senate Bill 408 is that it says only an infertile person and spouse can hire a surrogate mother, and requires a doctor's affidavit stating that one of the intended parents is unable to conceive.

Limiting surrogacy agreements to married couples wouldn't be unprecedented -- about half the states that allow such arrangements use that standard. But just because other states have done it doesn't mean this one should.

The marriage requirement would not only bar gay and lesbian couples who are prohibited from marrying. It also would block married couples who are fertile but want to avoid passing on inherited genetic diseases to a biological child.

That's not all. If a couple had frozen embryos and one partner died before a child resulted, the survivor -- no longer married -- would be barred from hiring a surrogate mother to bring an embryo to term.

Current law considers gay couples and lone adults good enough to adopt children who are already born. They ought to be good enough to enter a legal agreement to produce a child through surrogacy.

That said, the state still needs a framework to protect the children born of such agreements, and we don't have to reinvent the wheel to get it. The Uniform Act covers the eventualities with sufficient clarity.

From the very beginning, it makes plain to everyone -- sperm and egg donors, gestational moms and their spouses (if any), intended parents and the courts -- what provisions are permissible and enforceable, and who has what legal rights and responsibilities. In Pennsylvania, no such clarity exists.

John Sampson, a University of Texas law professor who helped draft the model surrogacy statute of the Uniform Act, has said this of the statutory vacuum surrounding the tug-of-war over the Pennsylvania triplets: "It's legislative child abuse for not having a law on the subject in the first place."

Indeed. Our lawmakers are capable of passing legislation on casino gambling and their own pay raises, but curiously incapable of other things.

Property tax reform and covering 3.5 million medically uninsured residents are already on the waiting list. Add to it the protection of children born under surrogacy contract. Add, as well, one more reason to shake up the Legislature on election day.