Regarding the March 24 article "Top court: No registry for pair born surrogate": Why would the Supreme Court judges punish TV celebrity Aki Mukai for seeking the loving support of a surrogate mother to have children? Even if the surrogate in this case happened to be (gasp) an American woman? Does this somehow make Mukai's children less Japanese?

Most likely all the judges have lovely, healthy Japanese wives and their own offspring arrived in this world directly from a genuine Japanese womb. The baby twins of poor Mukai are in a stateless limbo for the time being because their mom went through a painful hysterectomy after suffering life-threatening uterine cancer. In the minds of these conservative, coldhearted judges, children of a surrogate mother are in all likelihood freaks of nature ineligible for public registry.

Perhaps if one of the judges in this case were to suffer from, say, testicular cancer, he might develop more sympathy for mothers like Mukai and her husband. Meanwhile, Japan's birthrate continues to decline.

Mukai should be praised for her desire to have children so much that she would seek the services of a surrogate mother. Some Japanese women feel that having a child might interfere with their shopping/pachinko leisure-centered lifestyle and would call someone like Mukai foolish. If Tokyo one day ends up as a nearly childless city, we can thank today's nonsupportive attitudes on the part of the government and judiciary.

robert mckinney