Kim Kardashian is having another baby. Well she’s not actually “having” it herself. She and her husband, the rapper Kanye West, are paying another woman to give birth to it. “I’m totally gonna forget,” she explains. “Then a month before I’m gonna be like holy shit, we need to get a nursery.”

Rent-a-womb is legal in the US but should it be made legal elsewhere? At present, surrogacy is only permissible in the UK, fot instance, on an altruistic basis: surrogate mothers can only be paid expenses. But the Law Commission – a panel of five men – is now reviewing surrogacy law, and rather than follow the example of Sweden, which has proposed banning surrogacy altogether, it seems to have made “streamlining” the law a priority. That sounds very much like a green light for a profitable industry in UK womb rental. Yet you only have to look at the international surrogacy racket to know what the motor force behind that industry will be: financial desperation. It’s that which drives Greek, Indian or Ukrainian women to become “incubators for rich couples”. Is that what we want for Britain? (Catherine Bennett, The Observer and The Week, 14 Jan 2019).

My comment:  I found myself  asking the question, “is this ethical; indeed, is it moral?

–    I agree with Catherine Bennet  – a woman would only agree to bear someone else’s baby if she was desperate for money.    This raises yet again the question of inequality and treatment of the poor, which has become an urgent issue in most places in the world.

–   How can you justify, for money, possibly subjecting a poor woman to possible complications in childbirth, or even death – in return for money? It sounds obscene.  Then, afterwards, there will be feelings, forevermore, of the birth mother who has handed over her baby, and  cannot watch the child grow up.

–   There is an argument for asking why, if a woman is barren or over the age of childbearing, should she not accept her fate with grace and enjoy life in other ways?  ( having children is not the passport to bliss sometimes imagined.  It’s hard work, for a start).  Millions have mental or physical disabilities and have  to live with them in resignation and silence – why not childlessness?

– If you are that desperate for a child are there not many thousands of orphans who, arguably, should be looked after and be placed in a nice home.

I don’t think this is a good idea.