The Misguided International Push to Abolish Surrogacy

Meg Mars, Esq.

Our legal practice is built on helping protect and grow families primarily through assisted reproduction (and other avenues, too). Surrogacy is a legitimate and deeply meaningful path to parenthood, one that benefits from intentional participation and regulation. A coordinated international movement is, unfortunately, working to abolish it, and this post aims to explain what that push looks like and why thoughtful regulation is a better path for surrogates, intended parents, and children alike.

On June 22, 2026, a coalition of governments co-hosted by Italy, Chile, Cameroon and the Holy See and moderated by Alliance Defending Freedom International (the global affiliate of Alliance Defending Freedom, the organization widely known for helping overturn Roe v. Wade), launched a political declaration at the 62nd session of the United Nations Human Rights Council. The ask was substantial: a global moratorium on surrogacy as a step toward abolishing the practice through an international treaty.

The same day, Reem Alsalem, the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls, told the Council that surrogacy dehumanizes and exploits women and commodifies children. On July 15, she also spoke to the European Parliament Subcommittee on Human Rights and referred to surrogacy’s defining characteristic as “the contractual programming of the separation of a child from the woman or girl who has carried and given birth to that child” and declared that surrogacy should not be considered assisted reproductive technology (ART).

This stance is not entirely surprising coming from Alsalem given the scathing report on surrogacy that she released in 2025 (a report that has faced criticism for being biased, exclusionary, patronizing and largely reflective of personal ideologies). In it, she raised what are, of course, legitimate concerns of coercion, inadequate medical care, and loss of agency. These are genuine risks in surrogacy but mainly risks when conducted without safeguards and legal frameworks. In jurisdictions that do not require independent legal counsel, health screening, enforceable contracts, and bodily-autonomy protections, exploitation can be a reality. Those failures are real but are often taken out of context.

The argument to abolish surrogacy treats the consequences of failing to regulate surrogacy as an indictment of the practice, everywhere. That reasoning does not hold because prohibition will never eliminate surrogacy and never has.

Italy’s surrogacy laws neatly illustrate this point. In 2024, Italy became the first country to criminalize surrogacy extraterritorially, exposing citizens who pursue it abroad to fines of up to €1 million and up to two years of imprisonment. Estimates nonetheless indicate that Italian couples continue to travel abroad to participate in surrogacy. A ban won’t resolve the underlying need but rather will channel people toward the arrangements that are hardest to oversee and the least protective. So, in practice, prohibition tends to create the vulnerability it seeks to eliminate.

With strong regulation throughout much of the United States and high-levels of recognition of surrogacy as a legitimate path to parenthood, the current federal discussion here has centered more on the citizenship and immigration ramifications of cross-border arrangements. After the Supreme Court struck down the Trump administration’s first attempt to narrow birthright citizenship in Trump v. Barbara (June 2026), the administration issued two new executive orders in August 2026. One seeks to restrict birthright citizenship, including for children whose parent “engage[s] in a commercial transaction” to ensure the mother gives birth on U.S. soil, and another, “Ending Birth Tourism,” directs officials to deny visas to those traveling to the U.S. to give birth. Some legal experts warn that the commercial-transaction language could reach surrogacy arrangements. However, at this stage, we don’t know whether or how these orders will affect international surrogacy. If you are currently mid-journey or about to embark on one, we recommend checking in with your agency and an immigration attorney about what this may mean for your journey.

What meaningful protection can look like

There are better models and legal frameworks that are intentionally designed to protect and support everyone involved in the surrogacy process.

For example, in Colorado, under the Colorado Surrogacy Agreement Act (C.R.S. § 19-4.5-101 et seq.), every surrogacy arrangement requires a written agreement executed before any medical procedure begins. The surrogate and the intended parents are each required to have independent legal counsel (separate attorneys representing their respective interests). The surrogate must complete a medical evaluation and a mental-health consultation, and the agreement must preserve her authority over her own health and welfare decisions regarding her own body and the pregnancy. Further, the surrogate and the intended parent(s) reserve the right to withdraw from the agreement without penalty at any time the surrogate is not pregnant.

Informed consent, independent representation, medical and psychological screening, bodily autonomy, and enforceable terms are precisely the safeguards that unregulated markets lack. And importantly, these protections do not have to stop at state lines. International bodies like the Hague Conference on Private International Law have spent years working toward common standards for recognizing legal parentage across borders. Although that effort recently stalled, its aim to harmonize safeguards rather than simply eliminating the practice, is a policy the international community should take up.

Who is affected

For many who undergo a surrogacy journey, it is the only path to parenthood. This includes LGBTQ folks; hopeful parents born without a uterus, or who have lost one to cancer, or who cannot safely carry a pregnancy; single intended parents; and couples who have endured repeated pregnancy loss. Even coverage sympathetic to abolition acknowledges that demand is driven substantially by same-sex couples and individuals struggling to conceive.

These families do not disappear simply because surrogacy is banned. Instead, they are left without a lawful, protected means of building the families they so desire.

A better path

If the objective is to prevent exploitation and ensure reliability in the surrogacy market for growing families, we believe the answer is regulation, not eradication. Robust, meaningful regulation protects surrogates, intended parents, and children alike.

Unfortunately, the debate about surrogacy is frequently conducted on behalf of surrogates without reference to their actual experiences. A policy that claims to speak for surrogates while disregarding what surrogates themselves report takes available evidence and substitutes it with assumptions. In doing so, it tends to deny surrogates the agency it purports to defend on their behalf.

Longitudinal studies from Cambridge that followed surrogates and surrogacy-born families in supported, regulated arrangements for more than a decade, found that surrogates generally show psychological adjustment, self-esteem, and mood within the normal range, report no regret, and describe entering these arrangements with informed consent. Many maintain positive, lasting relationships with the families they helped create. The same research followed the children born through these arrangements into adolescence and found them developing comparably to their “naturally” conceived peers. This is evidence that does not support the claim that surrogacy is inherently harmful to children.

Prohibition will not offer safety by default. Instead, it can remove oversight that would help keep the process and those involved protected.

Surrogacy should remain a choice. A fully informed one, and one supported by laws designed to safeguard everyone involved. This is precisely the standard our practice works to uphold, and it is the standard sound policy should aim for.

This post is for general informational purposes only and is not legal advice. Consult a licensed attorney regarding your situation.