Society must start taking the ethical questions around surrogacy seriously, a journalist has urged.
Writing for The Times, columnist Libby Purves lamented that with an increase in celebrities proudly sharing their surrogacy ‘journey’, “a world which once shuddered at the idea that you could buy a baby off a total stranger has pretty much accepted it”.
In the UK, commercial surrogacy is banned. However, purchasing a baby abroad and bringing the child back to the UK is permitted. Between 2014 and 2023, more than half of intended parents using surrogacy travelled abroad to have their child, with the US being the most common destination.
Suffering
Purves highlighted that the egg used in surrogacy can come from any woman “so the gestational mother would have no genetic connection, hence fewer rights. A black or Asian woman can now provide her client with a baby of white European heritage, or vice versa.”
The journalist noted how babies are “whisked away to avoid bonding” with their birth mother, something she points out as illegal to do for puppies in the UK.
She emphasised that despite publicised cases where women enter surrogacy for their childless friends, the “only research shows that they suffer more than average from neonatal medical and mental problems”.
‘Deliveroo thinking’
Purves concluded: “The age of Deliveroo demands that when you want a child it’s gotta be perfect and brand-new, you’ve paid big, it’s a private matter, nobody else’s business.
“Modernity always finds it difficult to deny sympathetic and wholly convenient fulfilment to any private feeling, from gender identity to social anxiety or niche offence.
“It would take rare, deep and confident moral toughness for any authority simply to say ‘no’.”
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