“Horrific” gaps in surrogacy legislation leave women and children vulnerable to exploitation and harm, a US congressman has said, as he introduced two bills to address the lack of meaningful safeguards in the multi-billion dollar industry.
The bills introduced by Republican Representative Scott Perry would close a loophole that allows registered sex offenders to legally obtain children through surrogacy agencies. The second bill would bar foreign nationals from obtaining US-citizen children through American surrogacy agencies.
Perry launched the proposed acts over concerns for the safety and the welfare of children and “the use of surrogacy to get around” the law, he said at a 1 June press conference.
Protect Kids from Creeps
The first bill, the Protecting Kids from Creeps Act, stems from a case in Perry’s native Pennsylvania, in which a registered sex offender and his boyfriend were able to acquire a newborn through surrogacy.
Unlike adoption, which requires background checks, home studies and court approval, private surrogacy agreements operate with virtually no oversight.
Perry said it is “horrific” that there is a lack of legal guard rails in many states, which mean that sex offenders can obtain children legally via surrogacy.
His bill seeks to impose a mandatory minimum 20-year prison sentence on any sex offender who knowingly enters into a surrogacy agreement. Surrogacy agency employees who knowingly facilitate such a deal would face the same sentence.
Perry said that without reform, babies and children are in danger of abuse, exploitation, trafficking and all the “worst things … you can think of”.
National Security Threat
His second bill, the Preventing International Surrogacy Exploitation Act, would prohibit foreign nationals from obtaining children through US-based surrogacy arrangements. The Pennsylvania representative framed the issue as a “national security threat”, saying it invites “immigration fraud and malfeasance”. He added that the present legislation means “we are allowing, if not facilitating, child endangerment”.
Perry singled out wealthy Chinese nationals exploiting the system, citing a case of a Chinese man who fathered more than 100 children through US surrogacy. He also described “horrific” incidents in California, where reportedly more than 107 Chinese-owned surrogacy agencies are currently operating.
"There's a mansion in California where people roll up to it like it's a drive-thru and pick up these babies and send them to China", Perry said, noting that even China has banned surrogacy domestically.
Bioethics experts have welcomed the bills. A spokesperson for the Center for Bioethics and Culture (CBC) said the proposed legislation reflects “growing concern” over the “inconsistency” of surrogacy regulation across states.
The spokesperson pointed to the absence of “meaningful federal safeguards” in an industry that operates across borders and jurisdictions but is, at present, largely regulated at the state level.
The fact that the legal system does not already prohibit sex offenders from accessing children through surrogacy shows that “safety and eligibility” in assisted reproduction have not been “adequately codified into law”.
Billion Dollar Industry
The second bill, according to the CBC spokesperson, would close the American surrogacy market to international parents and address a “growing area of concern within the billion-dollar global fertility industry”.
Surrogacy is a fast-growing but highly controversial industry that frequently involves multiple legal systems, conflicting parentage laws and varying citizenship requirements.
The most common form is gestational surrogacy, whereby a surrogate mother carries an embryo created using a donated egg fertilized in vitro with the sperm of one of the intended parents.
Surrogacy is banned in many countries, including China, France and Germany, while a United Nations report on violence against women previously called for the eradication of surrogacy in all its forms.
Great Britain allows so-called “altruistic” surrogacy. It is also legal in the United States and in several African countries, as well as in Mexico, Colombia and Ukraine.
The surrogacy market in the US alone is estimated to be worth $29bn, with some projections suggesting it could reach $79bn by 2031.
The practice is highly controversial, with critics saying it exploits women and children in vulnerable situations and comes with health risks for both surrogate mother and the child.
Proponents argue that surrogacy can provide intended parents with a path to family formation while compensating surrogates fairly. Recent scandals have highlighted issues of fraud and human trafficking linked to the international surrogacy industry.
Surrogacy Scandals
In May of this year, the house of Barrie Drewitt-Barlow, known for his advocacy of surrogacy and alternative family formation, was raided by police as part of an investigation into allegations including human trafficking for sexual exploitation. Barlow, along with his husband and two other men, remain in custody and are expected to put in a plea later this month.
According to Stop Surrogacy Now UK, the investigation serves as a reminder that “surrogacy-adjacent industries” intersect with systems that are already “under-regulated and vulnerable to abuse”.
A number of cases also made headlines in the US last year, with one involving a surrogacy agency network, Arcadia, facing allegations of serious fraud after authorities took 21 children, mostly born via surrogacy, into custody. The couple who ran the private agency, Guojun Xuan and Silvia Zhang, also remain at the center of a state child abuse investigation and have drawn federal scrutiny.
Lawyers for the unmarried couple claim the child abuse allegations and media reports are "over-sensationalized and false" and insist the pair are likely to win all their cases.
As these cases show, while the surrogacy industry is growing quickly, it is also coming under increasing scrutiny, with Perry’s bills indicating US lawmakers’ intent to more tightly regulate the controversial practice.
