On the one hand anybody can be a woman, men can be women, men are absolutely definitely without question women if they say they are – and on the other hand women exist for the purpose of pumping out children and can be rented for the purpose of child-production.

Or to put it another way, when greedy callous rich people decide they want to have a baby but the mommy doesn’t want to do that whole horrible carrying it and pushing it out thing, the people they pay to do the gestating for them are always, without exception, women. Never men, not even men who say they are women; always women.

The global trade in babies is big business. Research company Global Market Insights estimates the surrogacy industry was worth $14 billion (nearly £11bn) in 2022 and expects this to grow to $129bn by 2033.

Celebrities think nothing of renting a woman’s womb to secure a baby. Singer Robbie Williams and his wife used a surrogate for two of their four children. Actor Sarah Jessica Parker, she of Sex and the City fame, was delivered twin girls by a surrogate.

And we know for sure both of those surrogates were women, not men cosplaying women. How do we know? Because the result was actual babies, not fantasy babies.

[I]t was a decision in Edinburgh Sheriff Court a few days ago that exposed the ethical questions at the heart of this most controversial practice. A judge decided that a 72-year-old man and his now-dead wife were the legal parents of a three-year-old boy, Child A, who had been born in the USA under a surrogacy arrangement.

…

And while Sheriff Sheehan admitted that she would not have granted an adoption order to a man in his 70s, she said the child’s welfare would be compromised if the court did not grant a parental order in these circumstances.

If people in their 70s can’t adopt (for very obvious reasons) why can they exploit a younger woman to make a child for them to leave an orphan in a few years?

“These concerns must be balanced with the fact that A’s welfare would be gravely compromised by the court’s refusal to make an order,” she said, “His gestational carrier has had no contact with him since birth. He is now aged three years and 10 months.”

And there, in a judgment handed down by Edinburgh Sheriff Court, is the reason that surrogacy is unethical. The child’s birth mother, a woman who rented out her womb to elderly strangers in circumstances we will never know, is dismissed as a “gestational carrier”. She is dehumanised. Reduced to nothing more than a living incubator for a rich couple who were far too old to have a baby but wealthy enough to buy one.

She is dehumanized and the child is born to be an orphan.

A surrogacy pregnancy is also more dangerous for a woman’s health. Only this week, Canadian researchers who looked at the records of nearly one million births revealed that surrogates, who usually become pregnant by IVF, have double the chance of dangerous pregnancy complications such as high blood pressure and heavy bleeding. Around seven per cent of surrogates suffered severe complications, compared with 2.4 per cent of women with natural conceptions and 4.6 per cent who had undergone IVF.

Marina Ivanova, the study’s author, said there could be several reasons for this, including the “physiological and psychological impact associated with carrying a pregnancy for another person” and “the socio-demographic characteristics of those who choose to become gestational carriers”. In other words, surrogates are more likely to be women living in poverty, and carrying a baby for strangers will have an adverse impact on a woman’s physical and mental well-being. Tell me again, which aspect of this practice is ethical?

No can do.