Babies need women

In their lifetime not all women have babies, not all can, and not all want to. Yet every person who gives birth is a woman and all mothers are female. Feminists in the UK fought very hard for reproductive rights, and we defend them fiercely just as we do the right to retain the word “woman” and “mother” exclusively for female people. 

You can’t and shouldn’t force women to be mothers, then, but at the same time men should not be allowed to completely replace women in the parenting of children, whether that is by adoption or surrogacy. Given the statistics on male violence against children, it simply isn’t safe for the child — and especially for babies — to be raised exclusively by male strangers.

This week saw the horrendously distressing court case of Baby Preston. Preston Davey was 13 months old when he was brutally murdered after serious sexual and physical cruelty, by two men who were allowed to adopt him.  

Jamie Varley was convicted of murder, sexual assault and taking indecent images of Preston. His sexual partner John McGowan-Fazakerley was convicted of sexual abuse, child cruelty and allowing the death of a child. Baby Preston’s body was found to have 40 internal and external trauma injuries, including some consistent with “forcible penetration”.

It is almost unbearable to consider what this infant endured at the hands of these two depraved men. Preston was removed from his mother at 5 days old and after a period with foster carers he was handed to his rapist murderers. Inquiries will probably follow into social work failures and will also likely include the ignoring of red flags made evident to Jamie Varley’s colleagues at the school where he was a Head of Year and safeguarding lead. 

The stark reality is that these two male strangers should never have been allowed to parent Preston. Not because they were gay, not because they were insufficiently screened (though they clearly were), but because they are men. 

There are on average 63 child homicides a year. Infants under 1 are over-represented in statistics, accounting for between 19 and 20 homicides each year. Most of these are committed by a parent or step-parent, and this murderer is most often a male.  Over 90 evident of all homicides in the UK are committed by men. It is statistically evident that it is significantly safer to place a child in a home with a woman or multiple women.

The sexual risk to children from men makes this even more necessary. Last year a sensational revelation from Gavin Thomas, the President of the Police Chiefs Association was that there are so many child sexual offenders that it would be impossible to jail them all and he called for “softer measures”. Around 98 per cent of child sexual offenders are male. The National Crime Agency meanwhile revealed that it is possible that 750,000 men are interested in sex with children.

Placing them in homes where there are only men, perhaps multiple men, looks like lunacy. 

When it comes to surrogacy, an ever-increasing number of men are seeking to buy babies from financially-exploited women both in the UK and from some of the poorest women in some of the most deprived areas of the globe. Some of these men are gay couples and some are single men. Between 2019 and 2025, 170 single men made applications to register as parents for a child they had purchased through a surrogacy arrangement. With no woman present in the home, these children are at even greater risk of serious harm. 

A 72-year-old widowed man was granted permission in Scotland to become a parent to a surrogate child. The question anyone evaluating his suitability needed to ask is why he wanted this? His answer could never have been sufficient to make it primarily about the benefit to the child. Men like this make such a demand due to their own selfish needs — and in some cases those “needs” will be very much against the interests and safety of the child. 

As Sanchez Manning discovered via FOI, since it became legal 43 men over 60 have applied to become the parent of a child born to a surrogate mother. These men are taking babies from women and some of these men will be a sexual and physical risk to those babies. It is an evil practice and governments are morally and ethically empty in allowing it to proliferate. 

None of these men should be allowed to buy babies after renting the wombs of women. They aren’t all sex offenders, of course, but the appalling statistics on child sexual offending tell us that some are likely to be. 

The suitability and safety checks on surrogate parents are frighteningly limited — especially if men seek a surrogate child abroad. Government control focuses more on the residency status of the intended parents than on the physical and sexual safety of the child. 

Of course, it is inevitable that some men calling themselves women will seek to secure children into their deluded fantasy “woman world”. Men should certainly not be able to adopt or buy babies if they are confused about what sex they are. If they aren’t clever enough to understand where a baby comes from then they aren’t clever enough to raise one. In any case, they carry at least the same level of risk as any other man to that vulnerable baby.

If we saw Jamie Varley and John McGowan-Fazakerley as an “isolated incident” with all future risk at zero, then there would be no need to have the conversation about banning men adopting as a blanket rule, but it is not. Ian Watkins targeted and seduced women with babies in order to be able to rape the infant. He was sentenced to 35 years for some of the most hideous crimes against very young children and few shed a tear when he was in prison killed last year. Men with depraved sexual needs will do whatever is available to ensure those needs are met whether it is grooming or adopting. 

Gay men are not any less risky than straight men, despite a willingness by some diversity and inclusion devotees to suggest otherwise. They are still men. For this reason, it is crucial that babies and young children are never adopted into homes where there are only men. It is vital that the government makes moves to ban surrogacy altogether. No one should be buying children or renting women’s wombs (including women and not even if those women are famous).

Baby Preston should be the tragic catalyst for this seismic change — for if change cannot come after what happened to him, how many murdered and raped babies will it take?