Feminist icon Gloria Steinem has joined Christians and other conservatives in opposing a bill that would legalize commercial gestational surrogacy in New York.

For the state to legalize “the commercial and profit-driven reproductive surrogacy industry,” Steinem wrote in a letter this week, “harms and endangers women in the process, especially those who feel that they have few or no economic alternatives.”

“Under this bill, women in economic need become commercialized vessels for rent, and the fetuses they carry become the property of others,” Steinem said. “The surrogate mother’s rights over the fetus she is carrying are greatly curtailed and she loses all rights to the baby she delivers.”

While careful to distinguish between “fetuses” and “babies,” Steinem, who is vehemently pro-abortion, cannot help but tread on thin ice, denouncing the surrogacy bill because it “puts profit ahead of the long-term welfare of the fetus.”

One could make a convincing case that there is nothing more deleterious to the “long-term welfare of the fetus” than abortion.

“Reproductive commercial surrogacy is banned in almost every country in Europe, as well as in India, Thailand, Nepal and Cambodia,” Ms. Steinem notes. “If this bill becomes law, New York could therefore become the perfect destination for a global multi-million dollar commercial surrogacy industry that has already given other countries cause to ban it.”

While Steinem is absolutely correct in noting that New York would find itself in an unenviable position if it were to pass the surrogacy bill, the United States already finds itself in unsavory company because of its radically permissive abortion laws, defended by people like Steinem.

Allowing late-term abortions places the United States in a rogue’s gallery of nations not exactly known for their defense of human rights.

Currently, the United States is one of only seven countries in the world that allows abortions beyond 20 weeks. The other six are North Korea, China, Vietnam, Singapore, Canada, and the Netherlands.

Steinem also takes issue with the new bill’s lack of a healthy discrimination of exactly who could take advantage of the wombs for rent.

With the proposed New York legislation, Steinem observes, anyone, “from a well-intentioned and loving couple to a sex trafficker or pedophile, could come to New York and enter into a commercial surrogacy contract.”

In 1992, New York already barred commercial “gestational surrogacy” under Gov. Mario Cuomo, whose son Andrew, the current governor, aggressively supports the new surrogacy bill.

Mario Cuomo’s decision was influenced by the 1980s legal battle and media scandal surrounding “Baby M,” whose birth mother decided to keep her despite having taking $10,000 to gestate the child for someone else.

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