A chara, – I found it quite disturbing to note that in the significant column inches given to Jen Hogan's article on the proposed Assisted Human Reproduction (AHR) Bill (October 30th) there was not one single mention of the potential for surrogacy to involve the exploitation of some of the world's poorest women.
The article refers to the anger that the Bill only covers altruistic national surrogacy (where a friend or a relative in Ireland is willing to give the enormous gift of carrying a baby on behalf of another person). The article was one-sided in the extreme in that it presented only the opinions of those who want the Bill to cover international surrogacy and made no effort to understand why the Government might not want to incorporate this into the Bill. Sorting out the legal arrangements in altruistic national surrogacy should be straight forward but the Government needs to be very careful before it legislates for surrogacy in other jurisdictions where exploitative practices might have been involved.
Irish women fought long and hard to repeal the Eighth Amendment and be treated as more than incubators of unborn babies. How has it come about that we now seem to think nothing of treating some of the poorest women around the world as merely incubators for rich parents?
– Le meas,
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KAY CHALMERS,
Douglas, Cork.