Surrogacy is common, and life affirming; it’s a gracious gift to the infertile for those with the heart to do it.
There’s no sexual aspect to this, so there’s not a marriage/family morality issue.
For a man asking around about willingness, among those women he knows well — that’s not odd, that’s indicative that these others knew something more about his wife and family, and he was making queries; likely asking “Would you, or do you maybe know someone who might, be willing to consider this?”
the nature of the question, and how it’s going to be taken, are things that very much depend upon the relationship between the two parties: the one asking and the other being asked.
Between acquaintances, the query would be importune.
Between long-time co-workers decently acquainted with more closeted details of each others’ lives and families — no, not so much.
Surrogacy is not "orgasmic" but it >b>is sexual by definition, since we procreate sexually. It's called sexual reproduction. Having offspring is a major part, maybe the major part, of human sexuality, of being a male or a female.
Having children with anybody other than your spouse violates the exclusivity of the vows and the meaning of faithful monogamy.
Moreover, surrogacy divides women up into separate zones for exploitation: the vagina, the ovaries, the uterus, the heart and mind where the baby-mother bonding is formed. Divided up.
Surrogacy requires a psychologically "surgical" detachment between the baby and the mother who carries him in her womb. It amputates baby-mother bonding, or --- to use another analogy --- it starves it to death. It separates childbearing from maternal bonding, and thus separates the maternal womb from the maternal heart.
No way good intentions can justify bad actions. Surrogacy is de-personalization from the git-go: it intentionally, by plan, denies the baby's right to his primordial maternal bond, and leaves a wound on the soul of the deliberately-bereft gestational mother.
It doesn't matter if the person solicited to the scheme of mothering-without-mothering is paid or unpaid, an employee, a family member, a fertility clinic specialist or your former girlfriend. It's de-personalizing per se.
However, since there is only one legitimate way to "get" a baby --- via the marital act, intercourse, with your one-and-only honestly married spouse --- then with due respect to the baby, all the other ways are illegitimate: fornication, adultery, artificial insemination, prostitution, IVF, rape, surrogacy, breeding farms (like the Nazi eugenicists) or ---looking forward to the near-future --- gestation by machine.
These demean the baby. In view of the sanctity of marriage and the natural rights of the baby, these "ways to get" should not be.