Since the 1980s, the international market for commercial surrogacy has grown at a quiet but considerable pace. Each year, thousands of women agree to carry, for a fee, the child of another woman. Thousands of babies are born as a result on shaky legal legs: conceived by one set of parents yet claimed by another. Most of these children were born in the market as well as the womb, the product of desire combined with the ability to pay. The central argument of this paper is that surrogacy must be approached as a commercial relationship. There is already an active international trade in the components of baby production – wombs, sperm and eggs. There are rapidly advancing technologies that are certain to expand both the demand for surrogacy services and the supply of surrogate mothers. Yet the underpinnings of the surrogacy market – the rules, laws, rights and contracts – have been notably slower to evolve. Legislative bodies in both the United States and Europe have been loath to deal directly with the issue of surrogacy, intervening primarily in the form of prohibition. Yet because the demand function in this market can be so intense, couples are entering into surrogacy arrangements even when they suspect that the underlying contract is either illegal or unenforceable. Fundamentally, commercial surrogacy is an issue of political economy. It involves an economic relationship that sits within a deeply political calculus, one that goes to the very heart of political economy. What, the debate over surrogacy asks, can legitimately be sold in a market transaction? Who decides? And how can any authority weigh the desires of having a child against the dangers of selling one?