Today, Thursday 30th July, we observe World Day Against Trafficking in Persons to raise awareness about the increasing exploitation of women through surrogacy. The United Nations reports that the number of victims being trafficked globally continues to rise each year and we have tracked 29 publicly reported cases in which surrogacy and egg harvesting has been linked to allegations or findings of human trafficking, exploitation or organised criminal activity between 2018 and 2025.
These cases involve the recruitment and movement of women across borders in countries including the United States, Argentina, Cambodia, China, Georgia, Greece, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Nigeria, the Philippines, Russia, Spain and Vietnam.
Earlier this month, Thai authorities arrested two Chinese nationals wanted over an alleged illegal commercial surrogacy operation. Investigators allege that a 43 year old man and a 33 year old woman recruited Thai women for an illegal surrogacy agency which they managed alongside an unlicensed medical facility for egg harvesting and embryo implantation. According to reports, women rescued during the investigation alleged they were repeatedly injected with ovulation-stimulating hormones before undergoing egg harvesting procedures. This follows a similar operation we highlighted for World Day Against Trafficking in Persons last year, where over 100 women were trafficked to Georgia. The women were recruited via Facebook under false promises of gestational surrogacy and were also held for egg harvesting.
The women “were lured in by a job offer on Facebook, promising them a salary between 11,500 and 17,000 euros (£9,600 to £14,100) to work as surrogates for Georgian couples who could not have children.” We understand that the four Chinese nationals arrested in connection to these crimes remain in custody.
Just weeks earlier, the Philippines National Bureau of Investigation’s Human Trafficking Division dismantled an alleged illegal surrogacy operation after a surrogate mother bravely blew the whistle. House of Surrogacy PH recruited financially disadvantaged women through deceptive arrangements. A second site holding the women captive was found and authorities also uncovered possible falsified birth certificates for the babies.
Following the discovery, NBI Director Melvin Matibag said: “No individual should be treated as a commodity or be exploited because of their circumstances.”
These cases only reinforce concerns that women are increasingly being recruited through social media, trafficked across borders, isolated from support networks and exploited for reproductive purposes – and we are not the only ones who have noticed. In May, the UK’s Independent Anti-Trafficking Commission report “Anticipating Exploitation: A Futures Analysis” identified ‘forced’ and ‘coerced’ surrogacy as forms of reproductive exploitation.
As exploitation and human trafficking in surrogacy is happening right now, somewhere in the world, stakeholders and beneficiaries seek to rationalise and justify surrogacy through so-called ‘regulation‘ and law reform. Laws may change the way surrogacy is organised, but existing frameworks that ‘regulate’ this ‘pathway to parenthood’ have not consistently prevented abuses or addressed the inequalities that drive many women to engage with surrogacy.
Rather than assuming that better regulation will make surrogacy ‘ethical’, we should ask whether a practice that depends on separating a baby from their birth mother, while exposing women to significant medical risks and creating opportunities for exploitation, can ever truly be made ‘safe’.
We remind readers that a UK petition calling for parental rights to be transferred at birth (leaving women with no legal recourse as parental rights and responsibilities would be terminated at birth) will be debated on 7th September. The couple behind the petition obtained a baby from a single mother in the USA.
Write to your MP and if you need support to register your concerns with your representative, please email us for assistance on stopsurrogacynowuk@gmail.com
