by Lexi Ellingworth, The Critic
It is time to accept that renting out a woman’s womb is fundamentally wrong
As the topic of surrogacy ascends the ladder of political priorities, governments are wrestling with how to regulate this global marketplace and balance “ethical” models so supply can meet demand.
This inevitably leads them into a moral quagmire, involving complex issues ranging from child trafficking and the exploitation of women to the questions of what we know from basic reproductive biology and the false claim of a right to a child. It’s no wonder some governments cannot square this circle and say “no, it’s not for us”.
Some have. Kazakhstan has recently reached this conclusion. An increase in complex legal disputes, problems with citizenship and parentage, gaps in regulation and lack of oversight with agencies ultimately drove the decision to ban international surrogacy — but perhaps witnessing non-residents coming to the country for the purposes of getting a baby from Kazakh women is what finally motivated the government to close its doors.
In 2014 it was reported that domestic surrogacy in Kazakhstan was rising, with surrogacy pregnancies growing 10 per cent year by year — and Kazakhstan did not feature on the list of countries for parental order applications in England and Wales until 2023. So it’s a remarkable development, not because Kazakhstan is an obvious moral leader in women’s and children’s rights or that the issue was caught relatively early, but because governments with vastly different political traditions are arriving at the same conclusion: human reproduction should not be a global marketplace.