(LifeSiteNews) — The campaign to recognize the hire and sale of human life as a crime came to the British Houses of Parliament in recent weeks as LifeSiteNews attended a roundtable on surrogacy in the House of Commons.
Chaired by the leading British campaigner Lexi Ellingsworth of StopSurrogacyNowUK, the roundtable was convened by MP Sarah Pochin, with MP Danny Kruger also present to hear the case for the criminalization of surrogacy in the U.K. The case for a “universal ban” on surrogacy was presented at the roundtable and set out in the subsequent report by Ellingsworth, published by the Women’s Policy Centre on April 23.
Panelists including Paola Diana of the Women’s Policy Centre each made the case for the abolition of the hire of women to produce human life for sale. The MPs were shocked to discover that the reality of this trade is markedly different from its carefully crafted public image.
In the U.K., commercial surrogacy is supposed to be banned, with only so-called “altruistic” surrogacy permitted.
As the roundtable heard, in reality anyone in the U.K. can travel abroad to buy a baby. In fact, the industry has repeatedly staged events in the U.K. capital to promote the sale of children at home and abroad.
In February, U.S. surrogacy agency Brilliant Beginnings held an event in London to market the sale of children in the U.S. to prospective British buyers. As Ellingsworth has remarked in the past, these events are supposed to be illegal — so why are they taking place in the U.K.?
Again in London, on April 11, the Nigerian surrogacy agency Meet Surrogate Mothers showcased the cut-price route to baby buying on offer in the African market. As has been common since the founding of the major U.S. surrogacy firms in the early 1990s, Meet Surrogate Mothers is partnered with a law firm.
SenigUK states on its website that it specializes in “immigration and surrogacy” law. Once again, altruistic imagery and family values are used to present an appealing image of what is obviously a business whose stock in trade is human life.
The following week, London also saw The Familymakers Show take place on April 18. Billed as a “major event for LGBTQ+ Family Building,” its website announced that “half of all surrogacy cycles at their (partner) fertility clinic now involve same-sex male parents.” Here again, a lucrative and expanding market in human life is presented in feel-good “family-building” terms.
Noting this partner clinic “has helped create over 40,000 babies across 17 locations in England and Wales,” the publicity also showed testimony “from one of the first transgender couples in the UK to have a baby via surrogacy.”
Jake Graf, a woman who “identifies” as a man, explained how she and her “wife” could not have purchased a baby without the help of events like this.
“There are so many unknowns when it comes to navigating paths to parenthood – especially for LGBTQIA families, this is why events such as this are so important,“ Graf said.
With the British Parliament declining to push ahead with the liberalization of surrogacy laws demanded by groups like these, Graf added, “Without the FamilyMakers team, we quite simply wouldn’t be parents to two amazing little people.”
Both MPs present were visibly shocked to hear that the United Nations Special Rapporteur Reem Alsalem had concluded last year that there was typically no real difference between commercial surrogacy and the so-called “altruistic” model, which is legal in the U.K.
Extract on “Terminology” from Alsalem’s UN report on surrogacy (October 2025)
The reason being that “expenses” supplied to the “altruistic” surrogate mother are usually similar if not identical in sum to the fees paid in openly commercial transactions. Surrogacy is a business, not an act of selfless generosity, and its business is the production of babies for sale.
What is more, the panel reminded the MPs that the UN report on surrogacy found that women were routinely “pressured” into selling babies to homosexual and transgender buyers.
Extract from Alsalem’s UN report on surrogacy (October 2025)
Where altruism exists in these sales it is commonly found to be manipulated. The motive is profit, secured by the right to buy.
The UN report concluded by recommending the abolition of surrogacy worldwide — which is also the position of the Holy See.
Where is the evidence of a global business? Ellingsworth told the roundtable that the international surrogacy market is set to grow to over $200 billion worldwide in the next eight years, if the legal activism of the industry continues unchecked.
The impact of the roundtable on the two members of Parliament was significant. The evidence that surrogacy reduces to the hire of women to produce babies for sale is simply absent from the advertisements by which this international enterprise grows its market share.
The main lesson from roundtable for LifeSiteNews was this: that when people see the reality of surrogacy, they are appalled. This is why the case for abolition is growing, with total bans on surrogacy or the criminalization of selling babies across borders now in place in France, Germany, India, and Russia –– along with the recognition in Italy last year of surrogacy as a “universal crime.”
Public awareness of the awful truth of the surrogacy industry is growing. Recent months have seen high profile cases hit U.S. headlines showing how surrogacy exploits women, provides cover for international baby trafficking, and has led to the horrific abuse of children sold to homosexual men.
The truth about surrogacy is that its horrors are endless and that truth is now coming out in the seat of British political power.
LifeSiteNews continues to campaign in the U.K. — and in the U.S., the center of the international baby business — for the recognition of surrogacy as a crime. In a time of increasing polarization, the horrors of surrogacy have united pro-life Catholics and Christians with feminists and campaigners across the culture war divide. This unlikely but powerful alliance is demanding an end to surrogacy, which the Vatican said in 2025 was the reduction “of human beings … to mere products.”
This is why there is good reason to believe we are living through the beginning of the end of the global trade in human life. Surrogacy is not a left or right issue — it’s just wrong. Stopping surrogacy no longer seems like an impossible dream. The question of the dignity of human life is returning to our politics, and the case against it is unspeakable. We are going to win.