Shocking £11bn global trade in babies must end. Here’s what Keir Starmer should do

Celebrities think nothing of renting a woman’s womb to secure a baby. Singer Robbie Williams and his wife used a surrogate for two of their four children. Actor Sarah Jessica Parker, she of Sex and the City fame, was delivered twin girls by a surrogate.

Even government ministers, desperate to have children, turn to this controversial method. Two years ago, the new Work and Pensions Secretary, Liz Kendall, revealed in her local newspaper that she and her partner were delighted to announce they were having a baby… through surrogacy.

But it was a decision in Edinburgh Sheriff Court a few days ago that exposed the ethical questions at the heart of this most controversial practice. A judge decided that a 72-year-old man and his now-dead wife were the legal parents of a three-year-old boy, Child A, who had been born in the USA under a surrogacy arrangement.

Sheriff Wendy Sheehan accepted the man was outwith the normal accepted range of parenthood but, in her written judgment, pointed out that he is “active and energetic” and had secured a nursery place for the child and involved him in various age-appropriate activities. He was also “researching boarding schools” for his son’s secondary education.

‘Gestational carrier’

And while Sheriff Sheehan admitted that she would not have granted an adoption order to a man in his 70s, she said the child’s welfare would be compromised if the court did not grant a parental order in these circumstances. “These concerns must be balanced with the fact that A’s welfare would be gravely compromised by the court’s refusal to make an order,” she said, “His gestational carrier has had no contact with him since birth. He is now aged three years and 10 months.”

And there, in a judgment handed down by Edinburgh Sheriff Court, is the reason that surrogacy is unethical. The child’s birth mother, a woman who rented out her womb to elderly strangers in circumstances we will never know, is dismissed as a “gestational carrier”. She is dehumanised. Reduced to nothing more than a living incubator for a rich couple who were far too old to have a baby but wealthy enough to buy one.

A surrogacy pregnancy is also more dangerous for a woman’s health. Only this week, Canadian researchers who looked at the records of nearly one million births revealed that surrogates, who usually become pregnant by IVF, have double the chance of dangerous pregnancy complications such as high blood pressure and heavy bleeding. Around seven per cent of surrogates suffered severe complications, compared with 2.4 per cent of women with natural conceptions and 4.6 per cent who had undergone IVF.

Psychological impact on mothers

Marina Ivanova, the study’s author, said there could be several reasons for this, including the “physiological and psychological impact associated with carrying a pregnancy for another person” and “the socio-demographic characteristics of those who choose to become gestational carriers”. In other words, surrogates are more likely to be women living in poverty, and carrying a baby for strangers will have an adverse impact on a woman’s physical and mental well-being. Tell me again, which aspect of this practice is ethical?

It is a crime in this country to buy and sell human organs such as kidneys because law-makers and the medical profession understand that such a trade could lead to the terrible exploitation of vulnerable people. Yet surrogacy, where a young woman’s body is used to incubate a baby for strangers, is considered perfectly acceptable.

The Surrogacy Arrangements Act of 1985 set out the legal basis for the practice, and last year the Scottish Law Commission and its partner body, the Law Commission of England & Wales, published proposals to liberalise UK surrogacy law even further, including a proposal to allow the “intended parents” to become a child’s legal guardians from birth. At the moment, it can take up to a year for this to happen.

Starmer must act

And while commercial surrogacy is illegal in the UK, “intended parents” can pay a woman “reasonable expenses” to carry a child for them. Many people, including the elderly couple who were the subject of the Edinburgh judgment this week, go abroad to buy a baby. Dr Herjeet Marway of Birmingham University points out that Britons are the largest consumers of the Indian commercial surrogacy industry, which is reportedly worth over £300 million a year.

Little wonder that women’s rights campaigners are now calling for an outright ban on surrogacy, among them Surrogacy Concern. Its founder, Helen Gibson, says that, at the very least, the legal loophole that allows Britons buy a baby outside the UK should be closed. She adds: “It is selfish and grossly irresponsible to pursue surrogacy at all. We call on the UK Government to ban the practice of surrogacy in its entirety.”

The demand for surrogacy is rising. It is driven by people with wealth, same-sex couples, women who are infertile or too old to have a child of their own, and some who are simply “too posh to push”. Even people who in other aspects of their life consider themselves progressive or left of centre seem happy to exploit another human being to get what they crave – a baby to call their own.

But babies should not be for sale. Women are not “gestational carriers”, and surrogacy is a feminist issue. The new Prime Minister has a never-ending to-do list, but if he is serious about building a country where every single person is treated with respect, as he promised only last week, then he should start with a ban on surrogacy.