All entries on Feminist Legal Clinic’s News Digest Blog are extracts from news articles and other publications, with the source available at the link at the bottom. The content is not generated by Feminist Legal Clinic and does not necessarily reflect our views.
[C]alifornia authorities raided a sprawling mansion in Arcadia, removing fifteen children from the home of Guojun Xuan, sixty-five, a former Chinese government official, and his partner, Silvia Zhang, thirty-eight. Among the children was a two-month-old with a severe head injury. Authorities ultimately discovered twenty-one children, all with American birth certificates naming the couple as parents. Most were born to American women recruited online through “Mark Surrogacy,” an agency the couple secretly owned.
Neighbors said the mansion resembled a business, with a reception area and rows of nursery-style rooms. Investigators soon traced the couple’s network beyond surrogacy. Properties linked to Xuan were tied to narcotics, gambling, and firearms trafficking.
The Arcadia story was no surprise to those familiar with the surrogacy industry. In the last year alone, a Chicago veterinarian was arrested on child pornography and abuse charges just days before he and his male partner were set to collect their surrogate-born son. In Pennsylvania, a registered sex offender was exposed online after posting videos with the child he and his partner obtained through surrogacy. YouTubers Shane Dawson and Ryland Adams welcomed a son the same way, sparking outrage after past videos surfaced of them joking about pedophilia and child rape. These cases reveal a simple truth: In much of the country, there are virtually no barriers to buying a child.
Surrogacy in the United States is governed almost entirely at the state level, and many states have adopted permissive frameworks that treat surrogacy as a private contract rather than a public concern. No states, for example, legally require intended parents to undergo background checks or home visits, which are standard practices in adoption.
In the United States, it is estimated that only 2 percent of contracts are altruistic, or unpaid, suggesting that lower-income women are attracted to surrogacy for financial reasons. (Surrogate-mothers can make up to $75,000 in the United States.) When New York legalized commercial surrogacy in 2021, for example, altruistic surrogacy was already legal, but very few women volunteered without pay. Legalizing commercial surrogacy was championed as “necessary” to recruit enough surrogates—an implicit admission that money, not altruism, drives supply. Across the U.S., laws prohibit the sale of organs and criminalize prostitution precisely because there are some things that should be safeguarded from market influence. Renting reproductive capacity belongs in that category.
Even if money were no factor, there is another problem. True consent requires an honest understanding of risk, and surrogacy is far riskier than the industry acknowledges or is required to disclose.
When I began researching international commercial surrogacy—a practice banned in most developed nations—I was struck by how little oversight exists in the United States.
Of all foreign nationals purchasing surrogate-born children, 41 percent are from mainland China, with France (9.2 percent) and Spain (8.5 percent) next in line. The study noted that the most common demographic taking advantage of this industry are Asian men over the age of forty-two. This isn’t exactly the crowd you picture knitting booties and singing lullabies.
Once these U.S.-citizen children turn twenty-one and meet residency requirements, they can sponsor their parents and siblings for immigration.
The surrogacy industry itself openly markets this outcome. As one admits, “For international intended parents, the certainty of their child obtaining U.S. citizenship at birth is a significant factor in choosing the U.S. for surrogacy.” In plain terms, citizenship has become a product for sale alongside the child.