Unregulated Commercial Surrogacy Is Causing Serious Moral, Legal, and National Security Harms
Source: Jordan Boyd. "The Baby-Purchasing Business Continues To Be A Disaster." September 16, 2026. thefederalist.com
The Gist
The author argues that America's surrogacy industry is out of control and causing real harm—babies are being bought and sometimes abandoned, surrogates are deceived and exploited, and foreign billionaires are gaming the system to get U.S. citizenship for dozens of children. Despite recent media coverage and government crackdowns on birth tourism, she says these efforts aren't enough to fix the deeper moral and legal problems with paying for surrogacy.
Conclusion
The United States' largely unregulated commercial surrogacy industry is an ongoing disaster that must be addressed through regulation, because it commodifies human life, violates natural rights, and is being exploited in ways that harm surrogates, children, and national interests.
Premises
- Legal disputes like McKenna West's case show courts lack adequate frameworks to resolve custody and rights conflicts arising from surrogacy arrangements.
- Every surrogacy arrangement, even ones that seem to end well, involves commodifying human life and violating natural rights.
- Investigative reporting (CBS) reveals widespread loopholes and shady practices in the U.S. surrogacy industry, including deception of surrogates about who is commissioning children.
- Foreign nationals, particularly wealthy Chinese individuals like Xu Bo, are exploiting lax U.S. surrogacy and birth tourism laws to mass-produce citizen children for ideological or strategic purposes.
- Some intended parents abandon or neglect children born via surrogacy, leaving surrogates to raise or care for children they did not intend to parent, as in the Kyla Simpson case.
- The Trump administration's enforcement actions (visa revocations, birth tourism task force) confirm the scale of exploitation but are insufficient to fully address the industry's problems.
- Media and government attention to these issues, while a positive step, has not translated into meaningful reform or protection for the women and children involved.
Assumptions
- Commercial surrogacy inherently involves commodification of human beings, which is morally wrong.
- Natural rights (presumably of the surrogate, the child, or both) are violated by third-party reproduction arrangements regardless of consent.
- Government regulation is an appropriate and effective solution to the harms described.
- The behavior of individual bad actors (e.g., Xu Bo) reflects a systemic failure of the industry rather than isolated abuse.
- Birthright citizenship combined with birth tourism constitutes exploitation of a 'weak spot' rather than a legitimate use of existing law.
- The reader shares the author's underlying moral framework that surrogacy is ethically suspect from the outset.