Government websites accept surrogacy “regardless of relationship status”, whereas if you want to adopt there are months of home visits and references, including from any ex-partner from the past ten years. A social worker will “explore” how divorce or separation might have “impacted” your life.
So there we are: a world which once shuddered at the idea that you could buy a baby off a total stranger has pretty much accepted it. And last week we heard that after a 2019 UK ruling that single people could be parents through surrogacy, 170 lone men have done it.
And with all due respect to the millions of men who are mild and even selflessly motherly, this is a sharp reminder of how far we have travelled down an unmapped road. Half of all physical abuse and 91 per cent of sexual abuse of children is by men. Very few men are paedophiles, but those who are have been found to be typically careful planners.
Even if you lay that horror thought aside, the fact is that women, while far from perfect, are statistically safer. And new babies are fragile, irrational and at times enraging. If I were a poor woman in Colombia, driven to support my family by going through medical interventions and a host pregnancy, I would want to know a lot about the nature, stamina and virtue of the rich foreigner taking the infant that kicked inside me for months. This, however, is very rarely the deal.
So think not only about the babies, whisked away to avoid bonding (you’re not allowed to do that with puppies, by the way). Think about the women: not the publicised few who generously do it for gay men or childless friends but those at the sharp end. The only research shows that they suffer more than average from neonatal medical and mental problems.