Why is the Guardian promoting surrogacy?

[ThedaBara]

Have seen 3 or 4 articles in the Guardian this week about how easy and positive surrogacy is and how the government should change laws to make it easier for people to do in the UK. They are one of the news sites without comments under their articles so I'm curious what might have prompted this.
One of the pieces had a chart showing where most surrogacies take place, and top of it was the US, where the price was 250,000, followed by a lot of developing countries.
The UK law requires the biological parents to apply for parental rights, which is apparently annoying and time consuming. Am really shocked by the biased reporting on this

Heres the link.
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/surrogacy

Because they are a misogynist shitrag.

Not read the article, but I'd imagine that as a progressive left organisation it is primarily concerned with the 'rights' of middle class people, has little interest in the rights of poor women such as those that will be the carriers of the unborn of the wealthier classes, and favours the rights of adults over children. And that it has not examined its own thinking and position closely enough to realise this about itself. Like anyone of the progressive left.

I was wondering exactly the same thing! My thoughts were either it's Surrogacy Awareness Week (I don't actually know if that exists) or there's a debate, review or briefing coming up in the near future.

Yes.

Read a few of the articles. I don’t think they were particularly promoting surrogacy - seemed more like straight human interest journalism to me. I don’t see any opinion pieces or editorials stating a position either way.

Yes I've been noticing this pattern too. Are they realising that gender ideology is going down the tubes fast, and surrogacy is their new bandwagon?

They’re a misogynistic far left paper disguised as being middle class liberal

Haven’t read the guardian for the last 3-4 years

In a nutshell.

I noticed this too. Multiple of the pieces quote from parents who used the same surrogacy agency, so I'm wondering if that agency is run by someone related to a guardian editor or has paid for a lot of PR pieces to go out.

Far left? They're barely centre left.

Fully agree with you on the misogyny though.

They ran two articles yesterday, which i thought were relatively well balanced. But today they have run a new one which is much less balanced - nothing much about the opposition arguments, whereas they were covered yesterday eg husbands forcing their wives to be surrogates.

I suspect their staff got very upset yesterday, forcing the paper to run something more to their liking!

Compare yesterday's article (this one) with yesterday's (below)
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2026/jul/19/rise-overseas-surrogates-increases-risk-stateless-babies-experts-warn

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2026/jul/21/uk-surrogacy-law-creaking-at-seams-as-demand-rises-sharply

You think that the staff got upset about an article, forcing the editor to commission an overnight article that showed less balance than the previous article from the same journalists?

Ok then.

I imagine that the Guardian has more than its fair share of gay male staff for whom surrogacy is seen as a desirable option, so they use the pages of the paper to promote their own interests.

The articles i read were calling for change in legislation to make it easier to register parental responsibility for a child born overseas. And there was an article today from a first person perspective gushing about how 'perfect' the experience of having someone else carry a baby and then give it to you was. I didn't see anything about how much higher risk surrogate pregnancies are for the woman and the baby. Or what happens when a disabled child is born overseas and the bio parents get to walk away as they aren't listed as parents yet - which has happened multiple times.
The whole tone struck me as - if you would like to buy a baby this is what it will cost.

It's a misogynistic middle class liberal paper which pretends to be left wing and support the working class. In fact it's only concerned with the well-off middle class people who read the paper, some of whom might be interested in buying a baby.

I’ve been wondering this as well

Lesbians, generally speaking have at least one functioning womb between them so it’s much easier to source a sperm donor.

Gay men on the other hand have no way of having a family without a female being involved.

They have two reasonable options, adopt, or share a child with a close female who is willing to carry the child, and co-parent.

Surrogacy should not be an option and should be outlawed completely, IMHO.

Some people seem to see children as a lifestyle option, something one has to have and own completely.

Some Gay men (usually wealthy), see women as no use to them other than to have their babies.

BBC now at it too - a very pro-surrogacy item this evening on PM on Radio 4. There was an interview with an intended parent who was sad that safeguarding concerns meant he couldn't leave hospital with his baby. There was a mention of the UN Special Rapporteur (and others) viewing surrogacy as exploitative of women but the tone was very definitely in favour of liberalising the law. There was not one mention of the impact on the baby.

I have become increasingly hard line on this and think it should be completely illegal in the UK and that it should be illegal for someone to go abroad to use a surrogate too. Years ago this country criminalised people who go abroad to abuse women and girls. The same approach should be taken to surrogacy.

Agree

I heard that too @Theonethatmakesmelaugh .

The word "mother" was mentioned once, in legal terms.

Words like "female" or "woman" never got a look in.

The very non-human, mainly functional word "surrogate" was used to cover all the above.

The "poor me, my dreams were not met" from the man interviewed was simply jaw dropping. Surely he should have been happy that the hospital was making sure his daughter was looked after?

Never once did safeguarding or the rights of the child get mentioned, just his rights to his dream.

The lawyer was very slippery in how she got around the idea that poor (women) surrogates give birth for rich foreigners.

The interview really showed how this is all about the rights of rich, entitled people who have precious little concern for anyone, or anything outside of their wants.

I was very disappointed by the interviewer but, in fairness, between her and Evan Davis's right on attitude PM is grim nowadays.

Agree. I don’t believe it’s ever a good idea.

As women, we need to reflect on the fact that having legal right to our own children, and legal status as mothers, is very new in the context of history.

The Victorian women started to fight for mother's rights. They were WARRIORS.

But - we modern women, and of course, children, are in very grave danger now with all this redefining of what the legal terms means and subsequently, what the rights of children are in terms of their rights to their parenthood.

If it was human interest, they should be covering an all round perspective: from the child’s point of view, from the grown up child of surrogacy, from the woman’s point of view and from a social worker.

Yes. I bet that plenty of their staff went ballistic. Guardian journslists are absolutely the demographic using surrogacy.

Remember how the Guardian staff ganged up on the gender critical journslists like Suzanne Moore and forced them out? They have a lot of power.