Not for laughs

I READ with dismay your breezy review of “Baby Mama,” a new film about surrogate “motherhood” [“It’s Fertile Territory,” by Carina Chocano, April 25]. I don’t see how a movie about womb rental or related reprotech practices, such as IVF, sperm or egg selling, could possibly be funny.

Twenty years ago, in the Baby M decision, which invalidated surrogacy contracts in New Jersey, Chief Justice Robert Wilentz declared that, “In a civilized society, some things are not for sale.” Similarly, in a decent society, some things are not funny. Turning human life into a shopped for, lab-created commodity peddled by a fertility industrial complex to self-focused consumers is film noir, not comedy.

Mark Oshinskie

Highland Park, N.J.