Despite the legal uncertainties, thousands of children are born each year pursuant to gestational agreements. One thing is clear; a child born under these circumstances is entitled to have its status clarified. Therefore, NCCUSL once again ventured into this controversial subject, withdrawing USCACA and substituting bracketed Article 8 of the new UPA. The article incorporates many of the USCACA provisions allowing validation and enforcement of gestational agreements, along with some important modifications. The article is bracketed because of a concern that state legislatures may decide that they are still not ready to address gestational agreements, or that they want to treat them differently from what Article 8 provides. States may omit this article without undermining the other provisions of the UPA (2002).

Article 8's replacement of the USCACA terminology, "surrogate mother," by "gestational mother" is important. First, labeling a woman who bears a child a "surrogate" does not comport with the dictionary definition of the term under any construction, to wit: "a person appointed to act in the place of another" or "something serving as a substitute." The term is especially misleading when "surrogate" refers to a woman who supplies both "egg and womb," that is, a woman who is a genetic as well as gestational mother. That combination is now typically avoided by the majority of ART practitioners in order to decrease the possibility that a genetic\gestational mother will be unwilling to relinquish her child to unrelated intended parents. Further, the term "surrogate" has acquired a negative connotation in American society, which confuses rather than enlightens the discussion.

In contrast, term "gestational mother" is both more accurate and more inclusive. It applies to both a woman who, through assisted reproduction, performs the gestational function without being genetically related to a child, and a woman is both the gestational and genetic mother. The key is that an agreement has been made that the child is to be raised by the intended parents. The latter practice has elicited disfavor in the ART community, which has concluded that the gestational mother's genetic link to the child too often creates additional emotional and psychological problems in enforcing a gestational agreement.