by Rachel Stewart

For many people when they hear the word ‘surrogacy’ they conjure up images of a long-standing relationship between a sweet female friend and a smiling well-groomed couple who have made an adult arrangement that she provide the womb, and the couple get their previously unattainable dream. A baby all of their own.

It’s all so selfless and beautiful.

Cue the record scratch. Those two portly goofs got a bit carried away by publicly sharing their recent purchase on social media because before long the bearded one – ex-teacher Brandon Mitchell – was outed for being a paedophile. He has a 2016 conviction for possession of child pornography and the sexual abuse of children.

These two are not the first gay or straight baby buyers to be found to have a child sex abuse conviction, and nor will they be the last.

And just in case you don’t despise them enough already they used a now deleted GoFundMe campaign to raise the $100k for commercial surrogacy. It’s not cheap to rent-a-womb.

There are two types of surrogacy. Traditional and gestational. The latter is the more popular choice for obvious reasons. The baby carried by the surrogate does not contain any of her genetic material. IVF is necessary in this case, where either the intended mother’s egg or a donor’s egg is combined with the intended father’s or donated sperm to create embryos and replaced into the surrogate’s uterus.

Weirdly, in Pennsylvania, where conveniently these two men relocated to, commercial surrogacy is allowed for gestational surrogates but not for traditional surrogates.

Many will try and tell you that surrogacy is a complicated issue. To me, the only complication is where it’s legal and what types are legal. Which means ways are continually being sought to work around that. It’s great for law firms, commercial surrogacy providers, and paedophiles.

There’s even a booming trade in surrogacy tourism where package tours let you see the sights and the potential contracted surrogates from exotic locales like Mexico, Armenia, and Ukraine. It’s a serious business that is growing every day and is currently estimated to be around $25b.

Some stipulate heterosexual couples only, others straight and gay married couples only, some neither. It’s a smorgasbord of restrictions and opportunities but there are ways around all of it. Either way, it is people of means and privilege doing the baby buying.

But what about the women who carry the babies? Like prostitution many are drawn to it for purely financial reasons, but what are the psychological consequences of carrying a child for nine months just to give away? I think we all know the answer to that.

For me, the idea that children and mothers should be immediately separated at birth is an extremely uncomfortable one. Further than that, to whom are they handing the baby over? Surrogates – they tell us – go through a battery of mental and physical tests before being accepted and then inseminated. But what about the buyers? In the case of Brandon Mitchell why wasn’t he given the same level of scrutiny?

And of course just even mentioning a case like that of two gay men invites accusations of homophobia. I don’t care. I don’t believe and never will that people should view having children as a “right”. If you can’t have them – gay or straight – maybe there’s a reason for that. Something unseen but nevertheless real.

It's a popular pastime these days for gay men to buy a baby but to question the practice invites all kinds of predictable responses.

That skit caused a lot of hate to be directed at Saturday Night Live. Critics said it was making fun of gay men’s needs and was nasty and mean and – gasp – homophobic!

Well, this gay person could’ve technically and biologically had a baby but didn’t have the anatomically correct partner to do it with so never gave it a moment’s thought. Call me old-fashioned but that’s just me.

And you’ll never in a billion years convince me that buying a baby just by dialling up womb service is remotely good for the woman, the child, or the future of what still passes for humanity.

Just order a cheeseburger and be happy.