Milking Women for sale. Ad to homosexual couples in France.

Jojy Cheriyan MD;MPH-August 18,2013

A French woman recently posted an offer on a website ( which is a French version of Craiglist) to breastfeed babies of homosexual couples for €100 a day, just weeks after a divisive same-sex marriage law was passed in France. This has raised ethical questions ,as some bioethicists calling it morally wrong , some say cultural rot.

This offer, addressed to gay couples who have been able to marry legally in France since May 2013, promises up to 10 breastfeeds a day. The woman is mobile and based near Paris, according to the news paper The Guardian, which verified the identity of the woman.

It's illegal in France to sell maternal milk but this is a person proposing a service (breast feeding), not selling the milk in flasks, says Alexander Woog the chief executive of the website where the advertisement appeared.

While France has just joined more than a dozen countries to legalize marriage and adoption of children by same-sex couples, it does not permit surrogacy or assisted reproduction for gay and lesbian couples.

Payment for contract pregnancy is illegal in some countries, for example Canada, but in other countries, including the United States, paying women for gestational services is both legal and a viable business, according to bioethics online-journal named Impact Ethics from Canada.

Unethical surrogacy is booming in India which has come under sharp criticism from around the world. Women are sold to foreign couples especially from America, by agents who take a major chunk as commission and give a nominal share to poor surrogate women.

This practice has led to exploitation of women and commodification of children. In the U.S., the sale and donation of human breast milk has been going on for years(www.onlythebreast.com). According to a report published by the New York Times last year, gestational women can now sell their breast milk for months, or even years after giving birth and handing over the child to the intending parent(s). If the price is right, then the breasts of gestational women are now for rent along with their wombs.

Milk banks procure, screen, and distribute human breast milk to hospitals at a cost of about $4 an ounce. Breast milk can also be purchased on the Internet, where the price ranges from 50 cents to $3 an ounce. As breast milk is considered a food substance, it is not subject to the regulations that govern other bodily fluids and tissues (e.g. organs and semen).

Where are we heading to? Wombs and breasts are now available for rent. Human life is commercialized and where will this moral and ethical degradation end up? Only time will tell.

(Sources: The Guardian, The Impact Ethics-report on milking women, Bioethics News, The New York Times)

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