One of the best blogs around is the Public Discourse by the Witherspoon Institute in the US. Its latest entry deals with the often very murky world of surrogate motherhood.

It cites the case of a couple who had commissioned a woman to have a child for them, but who divorced and then told the woman, who was 27 months pregnant at the time, that they had no more need for the child.

It also cites the case of a couple who, having taken delivery of their child from the surrogate mother, left her to foot a medical bill of over $200,000 back in Austria.

It might, in addition, have cited the example of a Japanese couple who hired an Indian woman to have a baby for them, but who then got divorced and left her literally holding the baby.

Our own Government is planning a new, and from early indications, very liberal surrogacy law for Ireland. Is it aware of stories like the above?

Is it aware of how surrogacy, by its very nature, ‘splits motherhood’ between the birth mother, the genetic mother and possibly also a third mother, namely the woman who raises the child?

Is it aware that surrogacy by its nature is almost inherently exploitative of the (usually poor) women who make their wombs available for hire?

The blog in full can be read here.