A-Infos (en) France, Monde Libertaire - Surrogacy: They Break the Silence! (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

Four women who gave a child for others addressed a large and attentive 
audience at the Senate on Saturday, October 4, 2025. Three organizations 
presented a conference on the dark side of surrogacy: the International 
Coalition for the Abolition of Surrogacy (CIAMS), the National Council 
of French Women (CNFF), and Stop Surrogacy Now UK. They testified to the 
suffering they have endured and continue to endure. Alongside them, two 
female and one male lawyers explained the injustice done to these women. 
There were four of them, but how many women find themselves on a path of 
so-called "generosity" to give a child to same-sex or heterosexual 
couples or to single people? Media propaganda hides the sordid reality 
of this system of exploitation of women and commodification of children 
for the benefit of a rapidly expanding market. By 2025, surrogacy or 
surrogacy is experiencing unprecedented growth worldwide: nearly 770,000 
births are directly attributable to techniques associated with surrogacy 
or egg donation.

"Exploitation and Violence"

Reem Alsalem, the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women and 
girls in the context of surrogacy, concludes her July 2025 report on 
page 24 with: "The practice of surrogacy is characterized by 
exploitation and violence against women and children, including girls. 
It reinforces patriarchal norms by treating women's bodies as 
commodities and objects, and by exposing surrogate mothers and children 
to serious human rights violations."

For once, it wasn't the commissioning clients who were in the spotlight, 
but women usually rendered invisible, relegated to silence and 
objectification, reduced to their wombs, who shared their suffering and 
their stolen motherhood.

For example, Alejandra (1), from Argentina, a mother of two daughters, 
agreed to become the surrogate mother of a friend's son, happy to help 
with the parental project. Ultimately, she received only lies, found 
herself excluded from the project after the baby's birth, her passport 
confiscated, and forced to go to Spain. Meeting with lawyers helped her 
return to France, obtain legal documents, housing, and employment, and 
supported her legal action to regain custody of her son.

For Christian in the USA, "I was motivated by the desire to help others, 
and I later discovered that I suffered from toxic empathy." I also hoped 
to earn money to pay legal fees, as my husband was in a custody battle, 
and the compensation from the surrogacy was meant to help cover those 
costs." Deceived by a contract signed with a reputable agency in 
California, she realized that the prospective parents had been hired as 
intermediaries. A man in the UK, the biological father, is currently 
caring for the baby. During the pregnancy, Christian felt a very strong 
bond and a protective instinct towards the unborn child. The legal 
proceedings lasted four years to arrange custody of the baby in the UK. 
The only right granted: the court ruled that she would receive photos 
and brief updates about the child twice a year. Her family was deeply 
affected both during the pregnancy and the legal process. She regrets 
that the child does not carry her DNA, the secret of its birth will die 
with her, and whether her child will ever know that she truly wanted it.

Surrogate Mother for Her Cousin

As for Marie Anne, a British woman, she agreed to be a surrogate mother 
for her cousin, who was like a sister to her. They both committed to the 
arrangement, with Marie Anne certain she would remain in contact with 
the child. This free solution turned out to be much less expensive than 
using a surrogate mother abroad. Due to the use of IVF, the 
over-medicalization imposed a difficult procedure regarding the delivery 
and what she should eat, all without any support. During the delivery, 
the hospital considered her the mother: despite her cousin's insistence, 
she refused a cesarean section, a decision medically approved by the 
midwife. The hospital forbade the cousin from leaving with the baby, and 
it was Marie Anne who left. Then, the strange exchange took place in the 
parking lot, entirely outside the hospital's control. Then, she was 
pressured into signing documents declaring that she was the mother: 
"Imagine having to train your body and mind for nine months to believe 
that you are not the mother of the child you are giving birth to." Marie 
Anne received no payment. The commissioning parents filed a lawsuit to 
obtain a parental order, legally transferring parental responsibility 
from the surrogate mother to the commissioning parents and ending her 
rights. She refused, but her cousin pressured them throughout the 
two-year legal battle, and Marie Anne finally signed the order. Her 
daughter is eleven years old; she hasn't seen her since birth. "In 
trying to help another family, they destroyed mine," she says. Marie 
Anne has developed post-traumatic stress disorder and has a deep fear of 
hospitals, children, and babies, which is incompatible with her teaching 
career.

Julie, a French woman, gave birth in Spain to give her child to a 
same-sex couple. She chose Spain because surrogacy is illegal in France. 
She, too, is being denied the opportunity to see the child she had 
planned. She is even suspected of being a bad person, lacking parental 
capacity, simply because she agreed to be a surrogate mother. The child 
was ultimately placed with the man who has no connection to the child, 
as his partner is deceased. For this man, there is no question of him 
having used a surrogate mother. The only person who remains with a legal 
parent-child relationship is Julie, but social services do not see it 
that way.

A harrowing experience for each of the women

During the testimonies, it was a harrowing experience for each of the 
women. "You could see the suffering on the faces of the four women when 
they gave their testimonies. They could barely hold back their tears, so 
raw was their emotion. As participants, we could feel the depth of what 
they had experienced, so authentic were their accounts" (2).

During this meeting, essential questions were addressed, such as the 
motivations and circumstances that led these women to surrogacy, the 
impacts on their physical and mental health and personal lives, their 
analysis of the exploitative system involved in surrogacy, the 
dysfunctions of the justice system, and the struggle to maintain a 
connection with their children. It emerged that any woman who has been a 
surrogate mother is disqualified from claiming a right to maintain a 
connection with the child she gave birth to: either because she received 
money, she is considered mercenary, or if she received no payment, she 
is deemed to lack parental competence. Those who possess parental 
competence are those with money, the wealthy who choose eye, hair, and 
skin color from a catalog, those who discard like a Kleenex the woman 
who helped them "buy" a child by renting a womb for nine months. The 
lawyers present, Constance Ambroselli, Hector Castro Montesinos, and 
Adeline Le Gouvello, testified about how they support surrogate mothers 
to ensure their suffering and motherhood are recognized. The legal 
system prioritizes the financial means of the intended parents over the 
best interests of the child and the mother's rights.

Surrogacy, beyond the semantic deception that labels it "altruistic" or 
the rhetoric that disguises it as "reproductive freedom," is the new 
face of human trafficking.

Hélène Hernandez
Pierre Besnard Group

1. According to the press kit distributed at the conference, for the 
first three women.

2. According to the PDF newsletter in brief, Vol. 2025-2026, no. 2, 
October 2025.

Collective work by CIAMS, <i>Ventres à louer, une critique féministe de 
la GPA</i> (Wombs for Rent: A Feminist Critique of Surrogacy), 
L'Échappée publishers, 2022

https://monde-libertaire.net/?articlen=8651
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