Today 29th April in the Sunday Times, I made the mistake of actually reading the paper.  Normally for the sake of my personal equilibrium I leave most of the newspaper unread! But at breakfast the ipad is there... and inevitably I was drawn into the disbelief being expressed by my husband over his tea and Frank Cooper's  marmalade on toast.

A couple are 'devastated' that one of the babies they ordered by surrogacy turned out to be not white...and therefore did not match the other baby they already had by surrogacy.  Their devastation apparently is that they ordered the two babies to be siblings....and aw.... they are not!    

 :-( 

That is about the level of the intellect which would have that reaction to a new baby specially brought into the world at their behest.

What is their concept of a family? That the children  have to be matching like luggage, or a new set of clothes for holidays?

Setting aside the whole racist response to a non-white baby in itself, ...a baby is a  baby, is a baby... whatever the skin colour is.  Haven't we grown past this racist crap now?

 It is 2012, the last time I checked anyway, but this feels like a time warped fifties story.  I thought that various ethical committees sat and deliberated upon the status of applications for surrogacy. 

Reasons for application for surrogacy? ...'Well we want to have a matchy matchy family'...fair enough I  guess, but when a mistake is made, to reject a child because it's not matching its sibling, beggars belief.

Probably they want to sue.  So are we to witness a case in court discussing how injurious it is to have a non -white child in a white family.  What an advert for our liberal democratic society.

 But hey! It goes with our social workers' ethic of wanting to keep adoptions within racial barriers. I know Cameron has said that has to stop ...but will it?