An expert from the United Nations called for surrogacy to be abolished globally as it is a "system of violence, exploitation and abuse against women."
“Surrogacy reduces women and children including girls to mere commodities, stripping them of their equality and dignity and encouraging their exploitation and abuse,” said Reem Alsalem, Special Rapporteur on violence against women, its causes and consequences, in an October 10 report to the United Nations General Assembly in Geneva, Switzerland.
The report looks at the different ways violence manifests against women and girls related to surrogacy, said a press release from the United Nations.
“Surrogacy is the result of commodification and commercialization of women’s reproductive capacities, and it preys on and exploits women, particularly those from marginalized and impoverished backgrounds,” Alsalem said.
In the report, Alsalem found that surrogate mothers face "physical, psychological, and economic violence," and said that surrogacy "results in severe human rights violations including of their right to health, privacy, family and physical safety and increases the risk of enslavement, torture, inhumane and degrading treatment."
The report further found that there are risks for children who are born to surrogate mothers. These include "negative physical and mental health and development outcomes resulting from separation at birth from their mothers," the risk of statelessness, trafficking, and abandonment.
Additionally, there is the chance of the "arbitrary and forceful termination of their lives in utero at the discretion of the commissioning parents."
“Despite these harmful consequences, several State and non-State actors remain complicit in enabling surrogacy, including by downplaying the accompanying abuses and risks, and sanitising the practice, which is gravely concerning,” said Alsalem.
Human rights
Surrogacy, said Alsalem, needs to be abolished worldwide to protect human rights. Those who commission children via surrogates, or who facilitate surrogacy, need to be penalized.
Those who carry surrogate pregnancies are victims in the scheme of surrogacy, she said, and should be provided with "comprehensive assistance, protection, access to justice and reparations," which will put an "end [to] their economic dependence on involvement in surrogacy arrangements."
The birth mother should be recognized as the legal mother of a child, said Alsalem, something that can only be changed 'through judicial adoption processes that safeguard the child's best interests."
Alsalem further detailed the need to raise public awareness about the harmful effects of surrogacy, in part through educational campaigns.
What is surrogacy, and how is it different from adoption?
A surrogate pregnancy is when a woman is contracted to carry a pregnancy to term for someone who either cannot or does not want to get pregnant themselves. The person or couple who receives the baby is referred to as the "intended" parents, and the surrogate is known as the "carrier." Paid surrogacy is illegal in many countries, but is a booming industry in others.
There are two main types of surrogate pregnancies. In a "traditional" surrogacy situation, the child is biologically related to the intended father and the carrier mother. In a "gestational" surrogacy, embryos are created through IVF from biological material of either the intended parents or donor(s).
This is different than adoption, as typically an adoptive couple is not the genetic parents of the child they raise. Additionally, the birth mother in an adoption is not contracted prior to pregnancy to gestate a child for adoption purposes.
What does the Church say about surrogacy?
The Catholic Church is against surrogacy.
In January 2024, Pope Francis referred to surrogacy as a "grave violation of the dignity of the woman and the child," and said that a child can "never (be) the basis of a commercial contract."
The former pope also called for surrogacy to be banned worldwide.
"Consequently, I express my hope for an effort by the international community to prohibit this practice universally. At every moment of its existence, human life must be preserved and defended; yet I note with regret, especially in the West, the continued spread of a culture of death, which in the name of a false compassion discards children, the elderly and the sick," he said.
