UN expert urges global ban on surrogacy while Ireland moves to allow it

The global debate surrounding surrogacy has been rekindled following a plea from Reem Alsalem, the United Nations (UN) Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women. 

Key Takeaways:

• Alsalem called surrogacy an exploitative practice that is a form of "large-scale violence" against women and children.

• She has called for UN member-states to begin taking action towards eliminating surrogacy.

• While some countries are attempting to end surrogacy, others are expanding it.

The Details:

In her speech on October 8, Alsalem denounced the practice of surrogacy,  for it “commodifies women and children,” acting as a form of “large-scale violence” against both groups.

Also, at the UN General Assembly in New York , Alsalem presented her report, which castigated the global surrogacy industry as a multibillion-dollar enterprise exploiting women and children. 

Valued at over $14.4 billion in 2023 and projected to reach nearly $100 billion by 2033, Alsalem cautioned that surrogacy exploits  women’s bodies while commodifying children. 

“The practice of surrogacy is characterized by exploitation and violence against women and children, including girls. It reinforces patriarchal norms by commodifying and objectifying women’s bodies and exposing surrogate mothers and children to serious human rights violations,” Alsalem stated.

Moreover, Alsalem offered suggestions for UN member states and other relevant stakeholders to take to counter surrogacy, such as:

1. At the international level, take steps towards eradicating surrogacy in all its forms.

2. Work towards adopting an international legally binding instrument prohibiting all forms of surrogacy;

3. Adopt a legal and policy framework for surrogacy that is modelled on the Nordic model for prostitution and includes pillars for penalising buyers, clinics and agencies to end the demand for surrogacy; decriminalising surrogate mothers; providing exit support strategies for surrogate mothers. Consequently, the advertising of surrogacy services and agencies must be prohibited.

Referring to Alsalem’s report, Scottish Legal News had this to say:

The report made a number of findings and recommendations relating both to surrogacy and egg donation. The consultation which underpinned the report received 120 submissions from around the world, including from women’s rights groups in the UK, and included online consultation sessions with 78 stakeholders, including surrogate mothers ...

Unlike in adoption, where parental assessment is recognised as an essential child protection measure, very few, if any, background checks are carried out on commissioning parents. Instead, the primary requirement placed on commissioning parents is the financial capacity to pay a substantial sum for the surrogacy procedure.

What We're Hearing:

Notably, Alsalem’s remarks found their ally in the Italian government, currently at the forefront for an international ban on surrogacy, having already banned surrogacy both domestically and overseas in 2024.

“Surrogacy should be prohibited not just domestically but internationally,” Eugenia Roccella, Italy’s Minister for Family, Natality, and Equal Opportunities, said, contending that present treaties safeguarding women and children must be updated to take surrogacy as a type of violence and exploitation into account. 

Italy’s UN delegation, along with international activists such as Olivia Maurel and the Casablanca Declaration movement, which lambasts surrogacy as “the slavery of our century,” echoed Alsalem’s views calling for a ban on surrogacy.

For some time already, Italy has been at the helm of efforts to oppose surrogacy and reproductive commodification. Through its Permanent Mission in New York, Italy has maintained that surrogacy “entails multiple dimensions of exploitation and violence,” echoing Alsalem’s stance that surrogacy intrinsically undermines women’s and children’s well being.

Strikingly, Alsalem’s recent report has unraveled the stark reality that surrogacy, despite its seemingly glossy promises of parenthood, is a process that reeks of trauma, coercion, and exploitation. Many surrogate mothers, especially those from economically  impoverished regions, often consent to being surrogate because of financial pressures, thus facing life-threatening invasive procedures, social alienation, as well as health risks that may be life-threatening.

Even with “altruistic” surrogacy that limits monetary transactions to medical expense, the eventual separation of children from their birth mothers is a traumatic event. 

The Other Side:

Notwithstanding the downsides and risks of surrogacy, the Oireachtas Health Committee in Ireland has laid bare a list of recommendations to widen  parental “rights” to couples who opt for surrogacy.

Although claimed as a decision towards establishing “legal equity," such a move risks trivializing a practice already slammed by various international bodies, including Alsalem’s recent UN speech. 

With regard to Ireland's concerning descent into the commodification of women and children through surrogacy, various religious and pro-life groups have long sounded the alarm against the commercialization of human life.

To pro-life advocates, opposition to surrogacy is about the sanctity of all human lives. Every stage of the surrogacy process — from implantation, gestation, delivery — trivializes the creation of life and the delivery of children into a transaction determined by legal contracts, as well as market supply and demand. 

As ADF International’s UN Director Giorgio Mazzoli noted, “Surrogacy rests on a system of violence that dehumanizes women and children alike.” 

The international momentum championed by Alsalem, ADF, Italy, and countless pro-life advocates is a great opportunity to reinforce that human life and dignity cannot be commoditized or outsourced.

The Bottom Line:

For the pro-life movement, these findings reinforce what has always been clear: no life, whether maternal or embryonic, should be subject to ownership or transaction. Human dignity cannot coexist with a marketplace where wombs are rented and babies are commissioned.

The pro life movement’s opposition to surrogacy is not out of animosity, but out of true compassion: for women, for children, as well as for the defense of the integrity of human life itself.