According to a recent international announcement on surrogacy guidelines, leading fertility organizations—including ASPIRE, ESHRE, ASRM, and IFFS—have collaborated to develop “minimum standards” for surrogacy practices worldwide. The effort is presented (should we say masqueraded) as a response to mounting concern over exploitation and inconsistent regulation.
However, this framing sits uneasy alongside the broader international context and seems to be a move of desperation from those at the top of the fertility food chain rather than true care for women, children, and families. These “guidelines” come in the wake of a clear and urgent call from the United Nations to move toward the abolition of surrogacy due to its inherent risks of exploitation.
Specifically, the recent report by UN Special Rapporteur Reem Alsalem, interestingly cited at ASPIRE, calls not for improved regulation, but for dismantling the system altogether – through the abolition of surrogacy. Against this backdrop, industry-led “self-regulation” appears not as a solution, but as deflection and strategy for preservation. These guidelines are being advanced in the name of “international cooperation,” yet they emerge from within the same sector that benefits directly from surrogacy arrangements.
If the goal is truly to uphold human rights, the conversation must continue to move beyond regulation toward abolition. Anything less risks entrenching the very harms that the international community has begun to acknowledge—and condemn.
Source: New Surrogacy Guidelines Ignore Calls for Abolition – The Center for Bioethics & Culture Network