There are two stories about surrogacy I think about.

One is that of an acquaintance who decided, at 65, it was time to become a parent. He’s a wealthy single guy who now has three eight-year-olds. He is, by all accounts, a great dad. The other is that of a neighbor’s daughter. She has a physical condition that prohibits her from carrying a child. She and her husband, both in their late 30s now, have had two kids—ages five and one—by surrogates. They too are great parents.

And yet… I don’t quite feel the same way about both cases. There’s something about a 65-year-old deciding to have kids that gives me pause. Why?

Well…

There is no federal law, and in many states no law at all, that limits the age at which a person can become a parent using a paid surrogate. If you can find a willing provider and can afford the process, you can hire a surrogate. The US has built a wildly expensive industry—the average US surrogacy costs between $120K and $250K*—without agreeing on what standards, if any, should apply to the people using it. Is this OK? Should there be limits? And if so, what kinds?

This is a conversation we need to have. In adoption, custody and guardianship, we take for granted that the adults involved are subject to scrutiny. With surrogacy, we’ve de facto decided we don’t need to ask many questions.

I believe in reproductive autonomy. Adults should have the right to make decisions about their own bodies and their own families, and mostly, they should. I am not calling for the state to start vetting who’s fit to parent. But there’s a difference between refusing to ration parenthood by class or ability, and refusing to discuss whether there should be limits on who gets to do it.

Now, maybe as a country, we’d decide we don’t want any limits at all. (I don’t think that would be my answer, but that’s just me.) But we should at least examine what the choices we allow mean for the lives of the kids born via surrogacy—what, say, a relationship between a twenty-something and a parent in their 80s looks like, or whether prospective parents above a certain age should have a plan for what happens to their kids if they die. My bet is that we’d decide there are some lines worth drawing.

Is this hard to talk about? Sure. But that probably means we should.

* The money piece is very problematic, but this isn’t a column about the fairness of infertility costs.