Global Effort to Shut Down Eugenic Baby Mills

By Diana L. Banister | 2026

UNITED NATIONS, July 17 (C-Fam) Governments from multiple countries recently signed a political declaration calling for an international moratorium on surrogacy and advocating a complete worldwide ban.

The declaration warns that women and girls in surrogacy arrangements “face medical risks, coercion, exploitation and loss of agency that fall disproportionally on vulnerable populations with limited access to legal remedies.” It also points to psychological, emotional, and identity-related impacts on children born through surrogacy, along with risks of abandonment and human trafficking.

“Surrogacy is no longer a matter confined to domestic legislation or individual choices,’ said Eugenia Roccella, the Italian Minister for Family, Natality and Equal Opportunities. “ It has become a global phenomenon increasingly shaped by international markets, cross-border arrangements, and profound inequalities within and between societies.”

A $600,000 lawsuit recently filed in Canada against a surrogate mother reveals the legal and moral complications of the practice. Two years after giving birth, the mother was sued by the same-sex couple who hired her because she refused to abort the child after it was diagnosed with a cleft lip and a possible heart defect at 22 weeks of pregnancy.

The child, conceived through in vitro fertilization using a donor egg and sperm from each of the men, has had one reported medical incident, but is otherwise healthy. The lawsuit alleges the mother failed to “follow the direction regarding decisions affecting the fetus’s medical care.”

Research indicates that 33% to 40% of those commissioning surrogates are same-sex couples. Homosexual male couples represent a substantial majority of this group, while heterosexual couples make up about 66% of surrogacy arrangements overall. The “Gayby Boom,” as it is called, represents the largest demographic in gestational surrogacy, which requires an egg donor, an IVF procedure, and a surrogate.

Celebrities who have engaged surrogates, such as Kim Kardashian, Nicole Kidman, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Neil Patrick Harris, have also boosted the popularity of the practice.

According to a UN study on surrogacy published late last year by the UN special rapporteur on violence against women, Reem Alsalem, surrogacy is now worth nearly $14.95 billion a year and is expected to grow to $99.75 billion by 2033.

Alsalem gave a report to the U.N. Human Rights Council during the recent session and again stressed her concern for the women who are most vulnerable to violence because of the surrogacy practice.

“The states that are joining the declaration today recognize that surrogacy raises fundamental concerns relating to human dignity [and] the commodification of women and children,” said Alsalem. “They recognize that these concerns are not only limited to commercial arrangements, but that fragmented national approaches will facilitate the growth of a global cross-border market that transfers harm onto women and children in more vulnerable jurisdictions…This declaration shows that policy action is possible.”

The declaration was released in June, during the 62nd session of the U.N. Human Rights Commission, by the Holy See along with Italy, Chile, and Cameroon. It was announced as the first step toward abolishing the practice they believe involves the “commodification of human life and women’s reproductive abilities.”

More than 220 organizations from 40 countries have been working together on a coordinated international strategy to end surrogacy.

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