Analysis

The fight against surrogacy is not a ‘left or right’ issue

A recent hearing at the European Parliament saw feminists, Christians, nationalists and conservatives unite against the exploitation of women and children by the surrogacy industry.
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Frank
Wright
Frank Wright
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Tell your legislators to end surrogacy in the U.S., Canada, U.K., Australia or N.Z.

(LifeSiteNews) — In 2021 the Heritage Foundation ran an article which said opposition to surrogacy “is not a simple left versus right issue.”

Authors Grace Melton and Melanie Israel pointed out that surrogate mothers have a far higher chance of dying during pregnancy or childbirth – as Michelle Reaves did in 2020.

They stressed that surrogacy is an institutional form of harm to both women and children. The women are merely rented wombs, with the children separated for life from their mothers. They explained:

Even in cases where a child is raised by his or her biological parents, children’s rights advocate Katy Faust notes that many surrogate-born children in these circumstances experience the primal wound of losing their birth mother, an experience well-documented among adopted children.

Melton and Israel told how Faust, founder of the children’s rights group Them Before Us, said “surrogacy is, by its very nature, an injustice to the child.”

Their conclusion was surrogacy in all its forms is harmful to women and children, involving child and human trafficking, and being the reduction of the production and value of human life to a consumer transaction.

These observations were echoed on November 19, when Reem Alsalem, U.N. Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women and Girls, addressed an assembly at the European Parliament.

According to StopSurrogacyNowUK, also present at the event, Alsalem told those assembled that “you cannot consent to harm.”

Alsalem’s further comments recalled her July 2025 report to the United Nations which said that in practice there is no meaningful distinction between commercial surrogacy and the so-called “altruistic” model.

This is the reason the event was “dedicated to the ethical, legal, medical and political implications of the rented womb,” as surrogacy is the transactional use of a woman’s body to produce children to order.

The hearing at the European Parliament was organized not by the left but by the national-conservative ECR Group, whose members include the party of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. Their political mission to defend “faith, family and freedom” is explicitly Christian.

Jennifer Lahl was also present, reminding those present that the surrogacy business is booming in America – whilst Meloni’s Italy has banned it in all its forms as a “universal crime.”

Lahl, a former nurse who founded the Center for Bioethics and Culture, spoke of how the California surrogacy industry is described as “the gold standard,” showing the reality behind this marketing claim.

“The parlous state of commercial surrogacy in California, with child trafficking, exploitation of birth mothers, surrogate deaths, infant deaths, and appalling actors running some of the agencies, is certainly not the way forward.”

She explained how this “gold standard” was secured by legal rulings in the 1990s which “led to statutes that legitimize surrogacy contracts, establish pre-birth parentage for those who ‘intend’ to parent, and allow for compensation.”

To recognize ownership of human life is to open the door to its commercialization, she said.

“These laws make the process of commercial surrogacy enforceable, which Big Fertility loves. Anyone who rents a womb, buys a baby, is guaranteed that child.”

The ECR-led event saw feminists, Christians, nationalists and conservatives unite against the exploitation of women and children by this industry, with a “European Network Against Surrogacy” event featuring the leading figures in the European anti-surrogacy movement.

Representatives from the U.S., Italy, the Netherlands, France, and Croatia joined the founder of the Casablanca Declaration for a worldwide surrogacy ban to argue that “surrogacy is not care – it’s a market.”

The event applauded the example set by Meloni’s Fratelli d’Italia party in the prohibition of all forms of surrogacy. The leader of the FDI faction, Carlo Fidanza, told the audience: “Surrogacy is a form of exploitation that must be abolished everywhere,” before vowing “our battle will not stop until surrogacy is considered a universal crime.”

In a further press release the Italian FDI condemned surrogacy as a “moral abyss” reliant on the rental of wombs, noting:

In Italy, we passed a law to make the rented womb a universal offence: European law denies that the body can be used for profit, as can the U.N.

Now the European Parliament is beginning to realize the risks of this practice so as to protect the dignity of women everywhere from a practice that represents a moral abyss.

This event marks a milestone in the battle to defend the dignity of human life from the consumer nihilism which has replaced it with price.

It comes 10 years after the campaigning feminist Kathleen Sloan said we must put our differences aside in order to defeat this grave moral evil. It is remarkable in a time of such chaos and division that an issue can unite Christians, atheists, feminists and nationalists. With so many European voices joined in condemnation of this trade, the closing remarks of Jennifer Lahl were a sobering reminder that some nations simply refuse to see any evil in the rental of women to produce human lives for sale.

“Most days I feel hopelessly lost that the U.S. will prohibit surrogacy,” she said.

“Most Americans are shocked to learn that much of Europe has banned surrogacy. ‘Why would liberal progressive countries not allow surrogacy?’ they ask.”

Lahl closed her speech by praising the Italian prime minister – and appealing for help to halt “surrogacy tourism” to the U.S. With the practice increasingly banned worldwide, America remains the freest baby market on earth, where anyone from anywhere can buy a child.

This means that people from countries where there is a partial ban, such as Canada, the U.K., and Australia, can still travel to the United States to order a baby through the rental of a womb.

“If you don’t want surrogacy in your country, please help me in curbing the markets for babies in the U.S.”

The anti-surrogacy movement is already international. Its case is not about “care” nor “rights,” but the recognition of a grave moral wrong which makes this a cause for anyone who cares about the difference between value and price – or between good and evil.

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