The left should welcome Italy’s ban on surrogacy – so why are they so outraged?

Surrogacy is the practice of asking or paying a woman to carry and deliver a baby for someone else. It is illegal in almost all European countries. Last week, The government of Giorgia Meloni has tightened the rules even furthercriminalizing Italian citizens who travel abroad to have babies through surrogacy. Anyone caught violating the new law could face a prison sentence or a fine of up to one million euros.

In countries such as Ukraine, Mexico and Georgia it is surrogacy tourism is widespreadwith wealthy Western ‘clients’ paying local women to carry their babies.

These surrogate mothers often have little legal protection, and there have been cases of intended parents rejecting children born with disabilities. The physical and psychological dangers for surrogate mothers Although the amounts involved make exploitation inevitable.

Surrogacy also carries risks for babies; Few can forget the heartbreaking images of rows of abandoned babies in Ukrainian hospitals as international borders were closed during the pandemic.

Italy’s repression is an important step in preventing the exploitation of vulnerable women and children.

British campaigners such as Surrogacy Concern and Stop Surrogacy Now UK have warmly welcomed the move.

In Britain, known as a nation of animal lovers, it is illegal to sell a puppy before it has been weaned from its mother. It goes without saying that the law should offer human mothers and babies at least the same protection as dogs.

So why are many on the political left – who have traditionally been so vocal in their opposition to exploitation of women – up in arms over Meloni’s surrogacy ban?

Activists claim Italy’s new law is “inhumane and evil” because it discriminates against single people and homosexual and infertile couples for whom surrogacy may be the only path to parenthood. One can only feel the deepest sympathy for those unable to conceive, but the left’s focus on the “rights” of various adult identity groups blinds them to serious ethical concerns.

Some surrogate mothers use their own eggs, so the babies given away are their own flesh and blood. But even women who use donor eggs and are “merely” gestational surrogates are still mothers as far as the baby is concerned.

Babies are born recognizing the sound of their mother’s voice. Research shows that divorce can cause lifelong psychological wounds. A baby’s cells can be found in a mother’s brain decades after delivery. Despite what the surrogacy lobby would have us believe, a surrogate mother is not just a womb for rent; mothers are not a replaceable commodity.

Of course, there are tragic situations where a mother cannot safely care for her own baby and it is therefore better for the child to be cared for by others.

But there is no moral equivalence with surrogacywhere a baby is conceived for the express purpose of being taken from his or her mother at birth.

It is often assumed that surrogacy is the process by which infertile couples in a committed relationship can become parents, but there are more and more cases that do not fit that pattern. Once the sacred nature of the bond between mother and child is devalued, ethical erosion is inevitable.

This week it was reported that an American couple who suspected their surrogate mother of drinking alcohol forced her to abort the baby after 20 weeks of pregnancy.

Those on the left who support surrogacy should think carefully about who it is who most deserves their advocacy. Will they continue to defend the “rights” of wealthy adults – whether straight, gay or single – or will they return to their roots and take a stand against the exploitation of vulnerable women and helpless babies.

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