This raises an obvious question: If surrogacy means couples want kids and families, it can’t be bad, right? But the complicated world of surrogacy is far more problematic and harmful than its proponents suggest. Even worse, some of them believe there are no moral dilemmas associated with surrogacy. As long as there’s a baby in the end, it’s a positive conclusion.

The two types of surrogacy are traditional and gestational. In traditional surrogacy, the surrogate’s egg and the father’s sperm are joined through IUI (intrauterine insemination). The surrogate then carries and delivers the child, later relinquishing parental rights. In gestational surrogacy, eggs are fertilized in a lab. Depending on the couple involved, the egg and/or sperm might be donated. Then the embryo is placed in the uterus of the surrogate through IVF (in vitro fertilization). The surrogate will carry and deliver the child, but does not have any parental rights. According to American Surrogacy, traditional surrogacy is not used as often today “…because of the emotional and legal complexities involved.” These issues have made gestational surrogacy the “new norm” in the industry.

For those not interested in or involved in surrogacy, it’s hard to quantify just how much it has grown over the years. Adoption is generally first on the list when thinking about alternative paths to parenthood and the creation of family units. The total number of domestic adoptions in the United States is difficult to pinpoint with complete accuracy. But the number of international adoptions has dropped precipitously in the past two decades. According to Pew Research, “the annual number of international adoptions to the United States has fallen by 94% as of 2023.” The peak was in 2004 when 22,988 international adoptions were recorded by the U.S. State Department. In 2023, that number was just 1,275. That is an astonishingly sharp decline. This drop includes countries with previously high international adoption rates, like China, Russia, and South Korea, to name a few. In a near-simultaneous fashion, the rates of surrogacy have climbed as international adoptions have almost flatlined. This is not a coincidence.

The global surrogacy market is already valued in the tens of billions. As Newsweek reports, that value is expected to increase into the hundreds of billions in the next decade.

“Although exact numbers are hard to track, estimates show surrogates generate billions in revenue each year from domestic and international clients. The research firm Global Market Insights valued the global surrogacy market at over $22 billion in 2024 and projects it will exceed $201 billion in 2034, with 5,000 to 20,000 babies born through surrogacy each year.”

In any industry, these figures would be impressive. By any measure, it amounts to a major success and a future of exponential growth. But surrogacy is not the buying and selling of essential manufactured goods that suddenly found a market. It commodifies children and reduces economically vulnerable women to tools of reproduction. The process has been and continues to be streamlined as demand exists. But the physical, emotional, relational, and societal costs are far too high.

Surrogacy as a tool for family creation naturally attracts those who are more financially well-off. On the other end, surrogates are often women who are looking to help themselves or their families with financial stability. Surrogacy as a service is a unique one. Not many women participate. But it’s fair to say many who do are in a state of desperation. Women who have few options available to them may choose to become surrogates to create a better life for themselves and any children they have: “The global boom has driven an uptick in demand for surrogates, with Facebook groups and agency adverts appealing to women with the promise of sizable incomes.” Olga Pysana, with the surrogacy agency World Center of Baby, is open about the motivation: “The main driving factor, whether in Ukraine, Georgia, Mexico — all the main markets — is the financial motivation behind it.”

“This is not a good industry for women,” said Teresa Ulloa Ziaurriz, regional director at the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women and Girls in Latin America and the Caribbean (CATWLAC). “For me, they’re victims.” 

Ulloa Ziaurriz said that in her experience working as a women’s reproductive lawyer across Latin America — chiefly in Argentina, Colombia, Ecuador, and Mexico — agencies specifically target those facing financial hardship.

There’s something deeply unsettling about turning pregnancy into a paid service. The surrogates who participate are eager to reap the benefits of doing a job few can or want to do. At the same time, those couples (or individuals) who use surrogacy to outsource parenthood know full well the dynamic of the situation. The global surrogacy market is fraught with abuse. There is a great power imbalance between those looking to have children by surrogate and the surrogates themselves. 

Two examples of surrogacy gone wild involve billionaires. Xu Bo, a Chinese billionaire who made his fortune in video games, and Pavel Durov, a Russian billionaire who founded Telegram, each have at least 100 children born by surrogates.

Xu has reportedly used dozens of U.S.-based surrogates not in an attempt to create a family, but something else entirely: “He said he hoped to have 20 or so U.S.-born children through surrogacy — boys, because they’re superior to girls — to one day take over his business.” As reported by the Wall Street Journal, there is a “largely unregulated U.S. surrogacy industry: Chinese elites and billionaires who are going outside of China, where domestic surrogacy is illegal, to quietly have large numbers of U.S.-born babies.” This lack of oversight means Xu Bo can play the system to his advantage, for whatever end goal he has in mind. And the surrogates and the children they bear are nothing more than instruments by a wealthy, powerful, seemingly untouched man. In Durov’s case, the offer of “free sperm” to women of a certain age resulted in the app founder becoming a father to hundreds of children. Durov paid for the IVF treatment for all the female volunteers who signed up. And why did they? Not only financial motivation, but the chance to create a child using “high-quality” genetic material: “They wanted to have a child from, well, a certain kind of man. They saw that kind of father figure as the right one.” In addition, these biological children will also receive portions of Durov’s inheritance.

“As long as they can establish their shared DNA with me, someday maybe in 30 years from now, they will be entitled to a share of my estate after I’m gone,” Durov said on the Lex Fridman podcast in October. Durov has said he plans to open-source his DNA so that his biological children can find each other.

While these stories are outliers when it comes to surrogacy, the same issues remain on a much smaller scale. Women are seen as paid laborers. And children are reduced to items that can be bought and sold. It is a kind of consumerism that strips humanity from both parties in order to meet the demands of a wealthier, in-control client.

For those who believe life begins at conception, the ethical problems surrounding surrogacy can’t be ignored. It is an industry that must freeze or discard embryonic life in order to create it.

Since its inception, the pro-life movement has focused on abortion, and rightly so. After Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973, abortion was treated as a necessary option for women with unplanned or unwanted pregnancies. There was a strong push to remove the stigma and normalize terminating life in the womb. Four years after the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, the fight to create a pro-life nation continues. In many ways, the work is more difficult now that the nationwide legal landscape is so varied. Abortion proponents are more resolute than ever, given their underdog status.

It is no surprise that the issues of IVF and surrogacy have historically taken a back seat to the abortion struggle. The goal of abortion is to end a life in the womb. There is a great effort made by the abortion industry to dehumanize unborn life and view it as nothing more than tissue that is potentially human. The goal is destruction. With IVF and surrogacy, the goals are a healthy pregnancy resulting in a healthy child. The goal is creation. But forgotten in that journey is the fact that IVF, a required step in surrogacy, also involves the death, discarding, or freezing of embryos. One or more pregnancies may not “stick” in any IVF process. Because of this, multiple embryos are created in the lab for multiple attempts. Some die in the process, others can be discarded, and still others are frozen. There are major ethical dilemmas at the very start of the surrogacy process. And from then on, the list of moral concerns only grows longer.

The pro-life community should be as adamantly against IVF and surrogacy as it is against abortion. The goal of ending life in the womb makes abortion an obvious evil. But the creation of multiple embryos, all individual human lives, in an effort to produce at least one healthy child is no less problematic. IVF and surrogacy are spoken of in a way that makes them seem more palatable. They are categorized as good because of the pro-child and pro-family component. But there is no way to make wholly positive a process that involves destruction or death as a means to an end.

Perhaps unexpectedly, many conservatives and feminists have found themselves on the same side when it comes to opposing surrogacy. The process involves the fundamental rights of a woman and the very life and worth of a child. Stopping the industry, or at the very least, heavily regulating it, are causes these two usually competing forces can get behind. The shared concern is enough for the rest of society to take note. It is rare for conservatives and feminists to be in lock-step. But on this particular issue, it makes complete sense.

Strikingly, opposition to surrogacy now draws from across the ideological spectrum. The Heritage Foundation, which leads the conservative Project 2025 agenda, has called surrogacy a threat to family integrity. Pope Francis condemned it as “deplorable” and demanded a global ban before his death. And radical feminists have long opposed the practice as exploitative.

Surrogacy as a practice would still be problematic even if feminists didn’t also align with traditional conservatives on the issue. The fact that they do isn’t required, but it does indicate just how the industry causes widespread harm.

Surrogacy is often presented as a compassionate answer to infertility or just an alternative path to parenthood. This current framing hides the many ethical concerns associated with it. And these problems are not given the attention they deserve. The practice of surrogacy relies on contracts and financial incentives. It instantly produces a power imbalance between vulnerable women and the individuals or couples who hire them. Also lost in the mix are the children who are treated as products and commissioned into existence.

REPUBLICANS SHOULD STOP RUNNING FROM ABORTION 

As society deals with declining birth rates and weakened family units, surrogacy is marketed as the next chapter in reproduction. But is the convenience and blurring of ethical lines worth it? It should not be categorized as innocuous and inconsequential.

Even if the market is highly regulated and seemingly fair, it will still involve the buying and selling of children. And a surrogate’s worth will be reduced to what she can biologically create and sustain. Women and children deserve better than to be reduced to transactions.

Kimberly Ross (@SouthernKeeks) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog and a contributing freelance columnist at the Freemen News-Letter. She is a mother of two and lives in the southern United States.