A forthcoming United Nations special report demands firm action against the global surrogacy industry, branding it a form of child trafficking and calling for its criminalisation. The report, scheduled for presentation to the UN General Assembly in October, disrupts the sanitized image of surrogacy as compassionate, instead exposing it as a “billion‑dollar trade” that reduces women to breeding instruments and babies to commodities.
The report bluntly states: “Commercial surrogacy … constitutes the sale of children, which is a crime,” and compares many arrangements to a form of slavery. Built on 120 submissions and consultations with 78 experts, its 19 recommendations condemn the replacement of motherhood with a contractual transaction.
The report also highlights disturbing practices embedded in the industry: prospective parents are offered “selective reduction” clauses, allowing them to abort babies based on sex or disability. Underlying these policies is a profound devaluation of unborn life, especially for children deemed “imperfect.”
Beyond these grim ethical violations, the report exposes how certain surrogacy agencies link the criminal underworld to family-building, noting that sex offenders have even used the system to obtain children. Surrogacy has become a gateway for those seeking children without scrutiny—underscoring the need for universal criminal accountability.
Finally, the report calls on governments worldwide to prosecute all parties involved in the surrogacy chain—from agencies to intermediaries—and to confiscate assets gained from the trade, urging an outright ban on commercial surrogacy. As it reveals such horrors under the guise of choice, the report reasserts the dignity of motherhood and the sanctity of human life. It is a timely wake-up call to defend both.
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