Is ethical surrogacy possible?
Analysis
BBC
4.6 • 1K Ratings
🗓️ 10 October 2022
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Does becoming a surrogate mother exploit or empower a woman? UK surrogacy law is under review, and there's a renewed debate around how it should be regulated. The war in Ukraine highlighted this, as the spotlight shone on the surrogate mothers, the babies they'd given birth to, and the overseas parents struggling to collect the newborns. In the UK the numbers of children born through surrogacy are still relatively small but they're expected to rise, not just because of medical infertility but also as more gay male couples and single men look to have their own biological children. For some surrogacy is extremely contentious, for others it's life changing. Sonia Sodha asks whether surrogacy is the ultimate commercialisation of a woman's body or whether it's the greatest gift a woman can give.
Producer Caroline Bayley Editor Clare Fordham Sound Engineer: Rod Farquhar Production Coordinators: Maria Ogundele and Helena Warwick-Cross
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know. |
| 0:04.6 | My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds. |
| 0:08.4 | As you'd expect, at the BBC we make podcasts of the very highest quality featuring the most knowledgeable |
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| 0:29.7 | If you'd like to discover something a little bit unexpected, find your next podcast over at BBC Sounds. |
| 0:36.0 | Hello and thanks for listening to this edition of Analysis, the podcast that looks at the ideas behind the news. |
| 0:42.0 | I'm Sonia Soda and I'll be asking whether surrogacy |
| 0:45.6 | can ever be an ethical arrangement |
| 0:47.7 | as current UK law is under review. |
| 1:00.0 | War producers. War produces terrible stories of human suffering and the conflict in Ukraine has been no exception. |
| 1:07.3 | But it's also given rise to reports you might not have anticipated of British people desperately trying to get into Ukraine as war was breaking out. These babies were being kept in a bomb shelter in key just after the war started. |
| 1:20.0 | They were born to Ukrainian surrogates for parents in countries including Britain. |
| 1:25.0 | It's very scary here. She says looking after these defenseless babies, we can only hope it's over soon. |
| 1:33.0 | Ukraine is one of a number of countries in which commercial surrogacy, |
| 1:37.0 | where people pay women to carry and give birth to a baby for them, is legal. |
| 1:42.0 | But the conflict left babies stranded in Ukraine with |
| 1:45.6 | intended parents unable to get to them. It's reopened questions about the |
| 1:50.0 | ethics of British people paying women abroad to have babies for them. Is surrogacy the ultimate |
| 1:56.4 | commercialisation of a women's body? Or is it the greatest gift a woman can give? And how should it be regulated? That's what we'll be |
| 2:05.1 | exploring in this programme. Sarah Jones is a former five-time surrogate. |
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