IS THE SURROGACY BOOM ABOUT TO BURST?

Activists and lawmakers are joining forces to challenge paid pregnancy

- BY JESUS MESA

CONSERVATIVE POLICY GROUPS AND FEMInist advocates rarely agree on what women should be allowed to do with their bodies. One side tends to defend traditional roles; the other insists on self-determination and autonomy. But on the thorny question of surrogacy, they’ve come to the same conclusion: it should end.

This unlikely alignment sharpened into public view in October, when Reem Alsalem, the United Nations special rapporteur on violence against women and girls, delivered a stark proposal to the U.N. General Assembly: that all forms of surrogacy—paid or unpaid, domestic or international—should be abolished outright.

She argued that the practice inflicted “multiple forms of violence” on women, reducing pregnancy to contract labor and their bodies to delivery systems for those with greater wealth and power. She likened surrogacy to prostitution and human trafficking, saying that even though women must consent to carry another person’s child, the practice still commodifies them.

“I did not speak of a ban,” Alsalem said in an exclusive interview with Newsweek. “I spoke of abolishing it.” The distinction, she emphasized, was deliberate. “‘Ban’ is something narrow and legalistic—it’s an action that can change. ‘Abolishing’ means eliminating or ending a system entirely, dismantling it at its very core, with broad structural and societal implications.”

Her report to the U.N. laid out a five-part legal framework modeled on the abolitionist approach to prostitution: criminalize those who commission surrogacy, prohibit third-party profit, ban advertising, invest in public awareness campaigns and offer support—not penalties—for the women who carry the pregnancies.