Chile moves towards outlawing surrogacy

Chile has taken a pivotal step towards forbidding surrogacy, advancing a bill that would ban and penalize the practice. The legislation continues its way through Parliament toward a final vote.

Key Takeaways:

• The Chilean Family Commission of the Chamber of Deputies recently passed legislation that would outlaw surrogacy in the nation.

• The bill states that surrogacy is not a neutral form of assisted reproduction, but instead a practice that degrades motherhood into a contractual matter and the child into the product of a commercial transaction. 

• The bill next heads to the Chamber of Deputies for a vote.

The Details:

The Family Commission of the Chamber of Deputies recently greenlighted the initiative to outlaw surrogacy. Parliamentarians have lauded the bill as an important step to protect the dignity of women and children and condemn the “commodification of life,” as Gaudium Press reported. At the moment, surrogacy is still not fully banned in Chile as the bill is still awaiting a debate and a vote by the full Chamber of Deputies. It will then go through the Senate before becoming law. 

The legislation defines surrogacy as contrary to the dignity of women and children, describing it as a form of commercialization of gestation and a new guise of human trafficking that treats the child as the object of a deal rather than a person with inherent rights. The bill states that surrogacy is not a neutral form of assisted reproduction, but instead a practice that degrades motherhood into a contractual matter and the child into the product of a commercial transaction. 

The proposed legislation also makes it a criminal offense to act as an intermediary, promote, organize, or profit from surrogacy, including any involvement by medical professionals or actions that exploit women’s vulnerability. Violations could result in imprisonment and financial penalties.

Additionally, the proposal includes preventive measures related to health and adoption. These would, for example, ban the donation of eggs for reproductive purposes and forbid adoption by individuals or couples who have been complicit in surrogacy arrangements.

Surprisingly, the proposal garnered widespread approval, with nine votes in favor from lawmakers across the political spectrum—left, center, and right—an unusual display of unanimity in contemporary Chilean politics.

The Chamber of Deputies is scheduled to vote on the bill in the coming months. If it passes, it will then proceed to the Senate for review and a final vote.

Zoom In:

Surrogacy laws are largely absent in Latin America. Tabasco and Sinaloa in Mexico are the only states that regulate it, while Brazil and Uruguay permit it under tight restrictions. Meanwhile, San Luis Potosí and Querétaro are the region’s only territories that explicitly ban the practice.

The Chilean bill comes amidst comments by Pope Leo XIV to the Diplomatic Corps on January 9, 2026:

“The practice of surrogacy exists. By turning gestation into a negotiable service, it violates the dignity of both the child, who is reduced to a ‘product’, and the mother, by exploiting her body and the generative process and altering the original relational vocation of the family," the Pope said.

The Bottom Line:

The bill reinforces that motherhood cannot be degraded to a mere contract or a rented function, proclaiming surrogacy contracts null and void and explicitly declaring that maternal filiation is decided exclusively by childbirth, thus dismissing any contractual transfer of motherhood.