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‘There Is No Human Right to Have a Child’
A top United Nations official denounced the surrogacy industry on Wednesday as “a system of exploitation and violence.” On Friday, she will recommend that the General Assembly ban it.
Reem Alsalem, the UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women and Girls, is expected to release a report concluding that the practice “violate(s) the dignity and the free development” of both the surrogate and her child by treating them as “mere objects,” “intentionally separates children from their mothers,” and “treats human life as a product.”
Her recommendation is sweeping: a legally binding international ban, criminal penalties for commissioning and facilitation, advertising bans, and legal and psychosocial support for women who are already caught in the surrogacy system.
Opponents of a global ban warn that it could drive the practice underground, punish women who act voluntarily, and trample on hard-won reproductive rights.
Alsalem, from Jordan, has been the UN’s highest-ranking adviser on violence against women and girls since 2021, and is an independent consultant on gender issues, the rights of refugees and migrants, and other subjects.
At a UN event on Wednesday, Alsalem said that surrogacy is “clearly responsible for inflicting large-scale violence, abuse, and exploitation on women and children.” She added: “There is no international human right to have a child.”
She told The Free Press that an international ban by the UN and other crackdown measures detailed in the report would show that “women are not vessels, and children are not products. Their dignity is inherent, nonnegotiable, and never for sale.”
The official’s recommendation is sweeping: a legally binding international ban, criminal penalties for commissioning and facilitation, advertising bans, and legal and psychosocial support for women who are already caught in the surrogacy system.
The global surrogacy market, which includes clinics, agencies, and apps that help intended parents find surrogates, is booming. The report said the market was valued at $14.95 billion in 2023 and is projected to grow to $99.75 billion by 2033. The parents are often from wealthier countries, and most of the payments go to intermediaries, not to the surrogate mothers.
The UN rapporteur’s report also cited instances where poorer women were “reportedly recruited on social media to become surrogates in conditions that prosecutors described as the ‘reduction to servitude.’ ” Some foreign women were trafficked to Greece to become surrogate mothers, while at least 100 women in the country of Georgia were reportedly confined for mass egg extraction, and some Cambodian women were forced to give birth in handcuffs.
Surrogate mothers also absorb almost all of the physical, emotional, and financial risks, the report said. Some women were denied compensation after miscarriage or forced to cover costs of fertility medication when pregnancy didn’t happen. The recruitment of women also glosses over side effects and dangers such as ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome, a complication of fertility treatments, particularly in vitro fertilization.
Many surrogacy agreements leave the women who become pregnant with little power and few legal rights. The report cited delivery by caesarean section that is arranged to accommodate a handover date, not medical needs, and newborn babies left in a stateless limbo because governments can’t legally agree who the parents are.
Alsalem’s proposals are likely to be polarizing. Italy was the first Western democracy to criminalize surrogacy at home and abroad. “Existing treaties should be updated to explicitly include surrogacy,” said Eugenia Roccella, Italy’s minister for family and natality, calling the practice “an attack on human dignity.”
Reem Alsalem (left) told The Free Press that the measures detailed in the report would show that “women are not vessels, and children are not products.” (United Nations)Many of those at the UN event where Alsalem spoke on Wednesday applauded her remarks—but not everyone. The United States, Canada, and Ukraine allow commercial or cross-border surrogacy. The UK and Australia permit it under tightly regulated “altruistic” models. France bans surrogacy outright. Italy wants that prohibition to go global.
Diplomats privately admitted that it is unlikely the General Assembly will endorse a total prohibition anytime soon. But Alsalem’s report could reset the terms of debate, forcing governments to defend surrogacy as policy rather than assume it as progress.
If the General Assembly embraces her report on Friday, it won’t just be a moral rebuke. It would be a line in the sand. And it would be the moment when the UN stopped treating surrogacy as a private workaround for modern family-building—and started treating it as a human rights violation.
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By Bari WeissA top United Nations official denounced the surrogacy industry on Wednesday as “a system of exploitation and violence.” On Friday, she will recommend that the General Assembly ban it.
Reem Alsalem, the UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women and Girls, is expected to release a report concluding that the practice “violate(s) the dignity and the free development” of both the surrogate and her child by treating them as “mere objects,” “intentionally separates children from their mothers,” and “treats human life as a product.”
Her recommendation is sweeping: a legally binding international ban, criminal penalties for commissioning and facilitation, advertising bans, and legal and psychosocial support for women who are already caught in the surrogacy system.
Opponents of a global ban warn that it could drive the practice underground, punish women who act voluntarily, and trample on hard-won reproductive rights.
Alsalem, from Jordan, has been the UN’s highest-ranking adviser on violence against women and girls since 2021, and is an independent consultant on gender issues, the rights of refugees and migrants, and other subjects.
At a UN event on Wednesday, Alsalem said that surrogacy is “clearly responsible for inflicting large-scale violence, abuse, and exploitation on women and children.” She added: “There is no international human right to have a child.”
She told The Free Press that an international ban by the UN and other crackdown measures detailed in the report would show that “women are not vessels, and children are not products. Their dignity is inherent, nonnegotiable, and never for sale.”
The official’s recommendation is sweeping: a legally binding international ban, criminal penalties for commissioning and facilitation, advertising bans, and legal and psychosocial support for women who are already caught in the surrogacy system.
The global surrogacy market, which includes clinics, agencies, and apps that help intended parents find surrogates, is booming. The report said the market was valued at $14.95 billion in 2023 and is projected to grow to $99.75 billion by 2033. The parents are often from wealthier countries, and most of the payments go to intermediaries, not to the surrogate mothers.
The UN rapporteur’s report also cited instances where poorer women were “reportedly recruited on social media to become surrogates in conditions that prosecutors described as the ‘reduction to servitude.’ ” Some foreign women were trafficked to Greece to become surrogate mothers, while at least 100 women in the country of Georgia were reportedly confined for mass egg extraction, and some Cambodian women were forced to give birth in handcuffs.
Surrogate mothers also absorb almost all of the physical, emotional, and financial risks, the report said. Some women were denied compensation after miscarriage or forced to cover costs of fertility medication when pregnancy didn’t happen. The recruitment of women also glosses over side effects and dangers such as ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome, a complication of fertility treatments, particularly in vitro fertilization.
Many surrogacy agreements leave the women who become pregnant with little power and few legal rights. The report cited delivery by caesarean section that is arranged to accommodate a handover date, not medical needs, and newborn babies left in a stateless limbo because governments can’t legally agree who the parents are.
Alsalem’s proposals are likely to be polarizing. Italy was the first Western democracy to criminalize surrogacy at home and abroad. “Existing treaties should be updated to explicitly include surrogacy,” said Eugenia Roccella, Italy’s minister for family and natality, calling the practice “an attack on human dignity.”
Reem Alsalem (left) told The Free Press that the measures detailed in the report would show that “women are not vessels, and children are not products.” (United Nations)Many of those at the UN event where Alsalem spoke on Wednesday applauded her remarks—but not everyone. The United States, Canada, and Ukraine allow commercial or cross-border surrogacy. The UK and Australia permit it under tightly regulated “altruistic” models. France bans surrogacy outright. Italy wants that prohibition to go global.
Diplomats privately admitted that it is unlikely the General Assembly will endorse a total prohibition anytime soon. But Alsalem’s report could reset the terms of debate, forcing governments to defend surrogacy as policy rather than assume it as progress.
If the General Assembly embraces her report on Friday, it won’t just be a moral rebuke. It would be a line in the sand. And it would be the moment when the UN stopped treating surrogacy as a private workaround for modern family-building—and started treating it as a human rights violation.