Centrepiece

Money squeamishness

Colin Welch

`What Judas did . . .

`Can't make up my mind about it.'

'A bit shady?'

`Like to hear his side of the case.'

`But the 30 pieces of silver?'

`Ah, yes, the commercial aspect. Most distasteful.'

`Repugnant.'

`Absolutely disgusting.'

'To betray a chap, one thing. But to do it for gain . . .

rr hus do we British nowadays discuss .1 tricky moral problems like surrogate motherhood: it is the way we think now. The rights and wrongs of it are disputable, elude us. A good rough guide meanwhile for the morally naive and bewildered: nothing can be wholly right which is condemned by Ronald Butt in the Times, nor wholly wrong which is defended by Mary Kenny in the Daily Mail. Nor did she say it was right anyway: how could it be, beginning as it does with what is in fact adultery? But she distinguishes carefully between what is wrong and what should be made illegal. To my mind she has, at this point as at others, rather the best of the argument alike in wisdom, sympathy and cautious common sense.

She castigates the hypocritical pseudo- morality which, if Mrs Kim Cotton, the surrogate mother, had had an abortion after six months' pregnancy (perfectly leg- al, though it means tearing a little baby limb from limb), would have defended 'the woman's right to choose'. Yet, because she gives life rather than takes it, she is damned in effect as a prostitute, her fee as `immoral earnings'. Miss Kenny too excori- ates easy abortion and over-powerful social services adoption panels, which have together created an artificial famine of babies to be adopted, thus denying to some unwanted babies a tolerable home, to others life itself. She mocks the conditions set by some adoption panels for would-be adopting parents — if male, not over 40, if female not over 35, non-smokers, not more than seven pounds overweight: was no good parent fat? She suspects that the social services' kneejerk hostility to sur- rogacy springs from a perceived threat to their power.

Even if you find all this unconvincing and Miss Kenny's argument incomplete, you might still agree with her that the Government should think long and careful- ly before cramming new laws against sur- rogacy into an already overleaded pro- gramme. 'Fowler to act over surrogate births,' the Times whooped: 'Bills to stamp out commercialism.' One thing Mr Butt does see very clearly, which is that it is pure squeamishness which concentrates on 'the commercial aspects' of surrogacy. Deprived by moral relativity of any objective standards of right and wrong, bewildered by the moral conundrums posed by advancing science, we take swift refuge in irrelevant 'commer- cial aspects' and 'exploitation'. Our feeble assumption is that whatever action can be used to make a quick buck is probably wrong, to be regarded, according to Lady Warnock in this case, as a 'criminal off- ence' and visited with penalties constitut- ing 'a real deterrent' (though to be fair Lady W. would treat as roughly even those who did it for nothing). The same action, by contrast, performed by or at the behest of high-minded busybodies for nothing (or rather at the taxpayers' expense) is prob- ably right, 'caring' or 'compassionate'.

This assumption seems to me mislead- ing. The fee offered by Baby Cotton's parents (wait: one is a parent; in future cases both may be) is some measure, however rough and fallible, of their long- ing for her and of the love they may be expected to lavish on her. The Warnock Report by contrast suggests that surrogacy should be overseen by 'a licensing body', composed of doctors, scientists, paediatri- cians, yes, social workers, lawyers, and `theologians' (the Bishop of Durham?), chaired perhaps by a lay person. Why should any such mandarin quango, disin- terested as it might seem, make better decisions than individuals far more in- timately affected? Perhaps Miss Kenny should be appointed to it, as theologian or lay chairperson: she does at least see that `experts' are not infallible. (Come to think of it, why not, despite her Catholicism, co- opt her onto the Church of England's Board for Social Responsibility, which characteristically regards payment for sur- rogacy as 'particularly distasteful', a nice squeamish word, beyond good and evil?) The modern English squeamishness about money leads us into many quagmires, material as well as moral. It postulates that the best things in life should be free — or rather not the 'best things, but certain things, selected seemingly at random, yet regarded for no intelligible reason as spe- cially important and sacrosanct, to be kept thus absolutely free from commercial taint. The word 'free' must also be qualified. On this earth there is no free lunch. What money squeamishness dictates is that cer- tain lunches are free to the luncher at the time of lunching, the bill to be paid later by all, including those who weren't there, who never will be, or who 'abhor lunch on medical or ascetic grounds.

Money squeamishness treates scarce re- sources as if they were, like air, given in plenty by God. It thus creates simul- taneous waste and want, profligacy and penury. By severing demand from supply, it inflates the former and depresses the latter. It multiplies `rights', but not the duties to sustain them. It thus creates moral as well as material difficulties.

It refuses, for instance, to meter and charge us for water, which is indeed in this country given aplenty by God, who nonetheless leaves to us the task of direct- ing it into scarce reservoirs and pipes. Drought is the result. Money squeamish-• ness forbids us to charge tolls for motor- ways. General taxation builds them in allegedly inadequate quantities (though how without tolls can one tell?) and sends the bill to, among others, people who can't afford a car. Money squeamishness keeps advertisements off the BBC, which swells monstrously and prospers, while ceaseless- ly bemoaning its poverty, by taxing owners of television sets, whether they watch or listen to the BBC or not.

Money squeamishness also dictated that the National Health Service should be free at the point of use. This absurd ideal, which treats as costless what is in fact more costly every year, has since been aban- doned. The NHS now charges only what money squeamishness will reluctantly per- mit: arbitrary charges unrelated to the real cost of the goods and services demanded.

Money squeamishness has taken away from us all the responsibility for deciding how much health care we can afford, and placed it instead on ministers to decide for `the nation'. Money squeamishness cannot face the grim fact that there is nothing in medical science to prevent the whole national income and more from being spent on health care. Someone somewhere has thus to decide at which point short of absurdity the line must be drawn. It is thus money squeamishness which gives to the minister the right, or even duty, to ban from the NHS certain drugs, including some which doctors think essential as pain-killers, laxatives and tranquillisers for terminally ill cancer patients. It also forces doctors to 'play God', deciding who can and cannot have access to kidney machines in scandalously short supply. Socialists rage at Tory ministers' parsimony. Yet whose money squeamishness conferred on them God-like powers which they allegedly abuse? Vous l'avez voulu, Aneurin Bevan!

Whoever raves against commercialism is in fact seeking arbitrary powers for himself or others greedy for it. Whoever offers free what is in fact scarce confers on someone or other the awful power to decide who shall get it and who shall not. Money squeamishness is a terrible guide to right and wrong. It solves no problems, creates new ones, moral as well as economic. It denies people not only what they want, but what they should or must have. It should be kept right out of the surrogacy debate.