‘We need to talk about how difficult it is’: why one couple are pinning surrogacy hopes on Mexico

[GingerBeverage]

If you don't want to read the whole commiserating article the tl;dr is: Wealthy white men determined to buy baby purchase eggs and womb rental in developing country.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2026/jul/20/couple-pinning-surrogacy-hopes-mexico

Surrogacy is buying a child. We cannot buy or sell people. It is desperately sad when people want a child and cannot have one, but violating the most fundamental principles of ethics in order to obtain a child is not the answer. We cannot buy or sell people.

"how not being able to have a baby is so indescribably painful for a woman that anybody who has not experienced it isn't in a position to criticise..."

I see this argument all the time, and like you, I could not disagree with it more. A woman (or man) suffering from extreme grief and pain due to infertility is not in the mental state to make a rational ethical decision.

Time for some longitudinal studies on outcomes for these commissioned products, sorry, I mean children.

As for demand increasing, perhaps that’s because so many people are seeing a capitalist revenue stream they can exploit and the media is playing along advertising it?

Because these articles read a lot like advertorials.

I agree, and partially because I have been there, to an extent. I had a very tough journey to having my first, with multiple miscarriages. Obviously I was tremendously lucky to have children in the end, and never had to decide when or how to call it quits. However, I was really desperate and pretty irrational at one point - might have made a really unethical choice? Maybe. Should I have been allowed to? No. Similarly, if I'm honest can I imagine making an unethical choice around buying organs to save my child's life? Maybe. Does that mean that the law should allow it out of compassion for that dreadful situation? Absolutely not.

I agree. I’m disgusted actually by the Guardian’s wholesale embrace of surrogacy. Who is speaking up for the babies who are taken at birth from the mother and handed over to their “commissioners”?

Whilst I cannot imagine the pain of infertility and empathise with women who can’t conceive naturally, there are many painful things about being human which can happen to all of us and which are outside our control. It is Tough Shit. Get some therapy.

Someone’s pain at being infertile will never justify the act of “commissioning” a woman - usually poor vulnerable women who have no options in life - to grow and give birth to a baby to hand over with no further contact. It’s unjustifiable and unconscionable. If anyone has a spare hour please watch the Channel 4 documentary on surrogacy in Tbilisi in Georgia. It will break your heart.

Those who agree with surrogacy need to ask themselves if they would happily advise their own daughters into this “line of work” (as per the glib Grazia article upthread written by a woman so emotionally detached from what she’s doing and who talks about acting as a surrogate as if she’s baking cakes to give them away for free) and perhaps think about how they’d feel if surrogacy became a careers option for year 13 school girls. That might make them reconsider their stance.

I couldn't have children and i adopted. I am infuriated by articles like the one in today's Guardian which basically accepts the need for surrogacy - all these young people with cancer for example. Yesterday's Guardian's two articles were much more balanced - they gave more info on objections to surrogacy - and I think it's interesting that after being relatively balanced yesterday, they have gone full throttle today on promoting it as a necessary development which requires changes to bennefit commissioning parents.

It's just not an answer to any problem, if for no other reason that while there may be some women who, for altruistic reasons, want to give birth to a child for somebody else, the number is always going to be tiny.

Framing the campaign to change the law as a response to increased demand just ignores what surrogacy involves.

It also really puzzles me when it's framed in terms of rights, particularly gay rights. How can something be both a right and also only available to the very wealthy?

Nobody has a right to have a child.