The Genetic Mirage – Why Surrogacy Is Not the Answer, and Why Regulated Adoption Is a Better Choice

Finland’s fertility rate is 1.3 children per woman. The retirement wave is accelerating. The tax base is shrinking. In this context, any policy that helps families form and raise children should be welcomed. But not all family‑building methods are equal. Commercial surrogacy – and especially its international, profit‑driven variant – is not a solution. It is a moral hazard dressed in compassionate language. This essay argues that for infertile couples, tightly regulated adoption is a superior choice: ethically cleaner, legally safer, and – critically – an arrangement that places the child’s needs before the adults‘ desires.

Part I – The Inversion of Priorities

In surrogacy, the child is commissioned before birth. A contract is signed. An embryo is created. A woman is paid to carry it. The intended parents wait. The child, when born, is handed over. The legal system then scrambles to catch up.

In adoption, the child already exists. An adoptive family is found for a child who needs one. The process is child‑centred from the first step to the last. This is not a semantic difference. It is a structural one.

Australia’s Law Reform Commission captured the distinction with a stark table:

Adoption	Surrogacy
Arrangement made after birth	Arrangement made before birth
Child’s needs considered paramount	Parents’ wants considered paramount
Reproduction is tied with parenting, keeping human dignity	Reproduction is separated from parenting, commodifying reproduction

Sources for this paragraph:

Australian Law Reform Commission, submission from FamilyVoice Australia (2025) .
“Surrogacy does not consider the best interests of children paramount, as the children’s needs are secondary to the desires of adults” – ALRC .

The difference is not accidental. It is the result of decades of legal evolution in adoption, compared to the regulatory Wild West of surrogacy. Adoption has been reformed, regulated, and – imperfectly – made to serve children. Surrogacy remains, in most jurisdictions, a commercial transaction between adults.

Part II – The Moral Hazard: Commodification of Women and Children

In October 2025, Reem Alsalem, the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls, presented a report to the General Assembly concluding that “the practice of surrogacy is characterised by exploitation and violence against women and children, including girls”. Her key recommendation: to eradicate all forms of surrogacy around the world.

Sources for this paragraph:

BMJ, “UN special rapporteur’s report on surrogacy encourages us to ask difficult questions” (Oct 2025) .
OHCHR, “UN expert calls for recognition of surrogacy as system of violence, exploitation and abuse” (Oct 2025) .

The report argued that surrogacy “reduces women and children including girls to mere commodities, stripping them of their equality and dignity and encouraging their exploitation and abuse”. Alsalem highlighted physical, psychological, and economic violence faced by surrogate mothers, arguing that the practice results in severe human rights violations, including of their right to health, privacy, family and physical safety. It also increases the risk of enslavement, torture, inhumane and degrading treatment.

Sources for this paragraph:

OHCHR press release (Oct 2025) .
BMJ commentary (Oct 2025) .

The UN report is not a marginal opinion. It is the considered judgement of a UN expert appointed to investigate violence against women. The report’s conclusion is unambiguous: surrogacy, especially commercial surrogacy, commodifies women’s reproductive capacities and preys on the vulnerable. The global surrogacy market is predicted to be worth almost $100 billion by 2033. That is not a coincidence. It is a business model built on inequality.

Sources for this paragraph:

BMJ commentary (Oct 2025) .

Part III – Health Risks: The Surrogate’s Burden

The risks to surrogates are not hypothetical. A 2025 study published in JAMA Network Open tracked more than 767,000 births in Ontario, Canada, between 2012 and 2021. Among women with no prior mental health issues, surrogate mothers were 43% more likely to develop a new mental illness compared to mothers who conceived and carried their own baby, and 29% more likely than women who’d used IVF. The study cited risk factors including “the emotional effect of separation from the newborn, maintaining relationships with the intended parents and child, and societal scrutiny about their decision to pursue gestational carriage”.

Sources for this paragraph:

HealthDay, “Surrogate Moms More Apt To Suffer Mental Illness” (July 2025) .
News‑Medical, “New study links surrogacy to higher risk of mental illness” (July 2025) .

Pregnancy complications such as sepsis, postpartum haemorrhage, and pre‑eclampsia are higher in surrogate pregnancies. The industry also distorts healthcare provision in commercial surrogacy destinations. In Uganda, a medical sector has been developed for IVF and reproductive surrogacy, yet local women cannot access obstetric care. The situation is similar in South Africa, where “ordinary citizens have little access to medical care for their own pregnancies, but the most sophisticated clinics are available for surrogate pregnancies”.

Sources for this paragraph:

BMJ, “Commercial surrogacy is ‘hijacking’ medical resources in poorer countries” (Oct 2025) .

Part IV – Global Exploitation: The Reproductive Brothel

The international surrogacy market is not a free choice for most of the women who enter it. In India, before foreign access was restricted, surrogates were paid approximately $6,000 to $8,000 per pregnancy – twelve times their annual earnings as garment workers, but a tiny fraction of what a Western surrogate would receive. Women were housed in hostels, kept on strict diets, surveilled and controlled, and allowed to leave only as a reward for obedience. One researcher described the environment as a “dormitory environment of… surrogate housing served to provide clinic operators and medical providers with the ability to observe and control all aspects of surrogates’ lives for the duration of their residence there”.

Sources for this paragraph:

University of Pennsylvania Law Review, “The Rise of the Reproductive Brothel in the Global Economy” (2014) .
Hastings Law Journal, “Gestational Surrogacy and the Global Economy” (2012) .

Surrogates were frequently selected based on traits such as “religion, caste, skin color, and attractiveness”. Intended parents reportedly sought “[f]air skin, [l]ighter hair, [b]lue/green or light eyes, and [h]igh I.Q. levels”. One clinician admitted that “a fair‑skinned, educated middle‑class Brahman… who speaks English will fetch that much more” financially.

Sources for this paragraph:

Hastings Law Journal, “Gestational Surrogacy and the Global Economy” (2012) .
Berkeley Journal of International Law, “International Commercial Surrogacy” (2012) .

This is not empowerment. It is a racialised, class‑based hierarchy of reproductive labour. The women who serve as surrogates in the global market are not volunteers in any meaningful sense. They are women for whom the alternative is extreme poverty. The intended parents are not customers. They are participants in a system of structural exploitation.

Part V – The Legal Nightmare: Parentage, Statelessness, and Abandonment

When surrogacy crosses borders – as it often does – the legal consequences can be catastrophic.

In Re Z, a British same‑sex couple in their 60s commissioned a surrogacy arrangement in Northern Cyprus, where surrogacy was illegal and placement of children with same‑sex couples prohibited. They paid £120,000. The children were born to two different surrogates of Ukrainian nationality. The children were de facto stateless – not granted Northern Cypriot citizenship, unable to avail themselves of Ukrainian nationality, and with no genetic link to the British applicants that might have otherwise resulted in recognition of their status. The family fought a four‑year legal battle to bring the children to the UK.

Sources for this paragraph:

Rayden Solicitors, “Re Zs – A cautionary tale of two surrogacy cases” (2025) .

Statelessness is not an edge case. The current diversity in surrogacy laws can, and does, lead to some children being born stateless, in direct contravention of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, Article 7(1): “The child shall be registered immediately after birth and shall have the right from birth to a name, the right to acquire a nationality and, as far as possible, the right to know and be cared for by his or her parents.”

Sources for this paragraph:

ALRC submission (2025) .

Children born with disabilities are sometimes abandoned. In 2019, an American couple who had commissioned a commercial surrogacy in Ukraine did not collect their daughter when she was born with disabilities. She was moved to an orphanage. In the ‘Baby Gammy’ case, an Australian couple left a child with Down syndrome behind in Thailand, taking only his healthy sister, and reportedly asked for their money to be refunded. The surrogate mother wanted to keep the boy. A judge later noted: “The appalling outcome of Gammy and Pipah being separated has brought commercial surrogacy into the spotlight… Quite apart from the separation of the twins, this case serves to highlight the dilemmas that arise when the reproductive capacities of women are turned into saleable commodities, with all the usual fallout when contracts go wrong.”

Sources for this paragraph:

Submission to NSW Parliament by Professor Sonia Allan OAM .

Part VI – Adoption: Not Perfect, but Ethically Superior

Adoption has its own painful history: forced removals, closed records, secrecy, and stigma. But those practices have been reformed in most Western countries. Open adoption – where the genetic and receiving families know each other openly – is now the norm. Adoptees can access their original birth records. Birth parents can maintain contact. The process is transparent, regulated, and focused on the child’s best interests.

Sources for this paragraph:

ALRC submission (2025) .

Adoption is also significantly less expensive than surrogacy. A typical surrogacy journey costs between $120,000 and $200,000, while adoption typically costs between $20,000 and $65,000. Surrogacy is the most expensive non‑traditional family‑building option, followed by international infant adoption.

Sources for this paragraph:

Hatch, “Understanding Your Options: Adoption vs Gestational Surrogacy” (2025) .
Steven H. Snyder & Associates, “Surrogacy vs. adoption: What to consider when starting a family” (2025) .
FIH, “Surrogacy vs Adoption – Key Differences Explained” (2025) .
SurrogateFirst, “Surrogacy vs Adoption: Cost, Pros and Cons” (2025) .
Georgia Surrogacy Agency, “Costs of Surrogacy and Adoption: A Comparative Guide” (2025) .
Hatch, “Surrogacy or Adoption: Which Path to Parenthood Costs More?” (2026) .

The cost difference is not trivial. A family that spends $150,000 on surrogacy could instead spend $50,000 on adoption and invest the remaining $100,000 in the child’s education, health, and future. The financial burden of surrogacy is not a necessary cost of family formation. It is a choice.

Part VII – Conclusion: The Child at the Centre

The desire to have a genetically related child is understandable. The pain of infertility is real. But the desire of adults does not override the rights of children. Surrogacy – especially commercial, cross‑border surrogacy – systematically subordinates the child’s best interests to the adults’ wants.

The UN Special Rapporteur’s recommendation to eradicate surrogacy is unlikely to be adopted globally. The market is too large, the demand too strong, the incentives too entrenched. But individual countries – and individual families – can choose a different path.

Tightly regulated adoption is that path. It is not perfect. It requires patience. It requires openness to a child who may not look like you, share your genetics, or arrive on your preferred timeline. But it is an arrangement that begins with the premise that the child matters most. That is not a compromise. It is the foundation of ethical family formation.

The genetic mirage – the belief that only a biologically related child can complete a family – is a luxury that the global surrogacy market exploits. Finland, with its collapsing birth rate and shrinking tax base, cannot afford to ignore the moral hazards of that market. Adoption is not a second‑best option. It is a better one.

Sources for this blog post (by section):

Part I (Inversion of priorities): Australian Law Reform Commission, submission from FamilyVoice Australia (2025); ALRC comparison table.

Part II (Moral hazard): BMJ, “UN special rapporteur’s report on surrogacy encourages us to ask difficult questions” (Oct 2025); OHCHR, “UN expert calls for recognition of surrogacy as system of violence, exploitation and abuse” (Oct 2025).

Part III (Health risks): HealthDay, “Surrogate Moms More Apt To Suffer Mental Illness” (July 2025); News‑Medical, “New study links surrogacy to higher risk of mental illness” (July 2025); BMJ, “Commercial surrogacy is ‘hijacking’ medical resources in poorer countries” (Oct 2025).

Part IV (Global exploitation): University of Pennsylvania Law Review, “The Rise of the Reproductive Brothel in the Global Economy” (2014); Hastings Law Journal, “Gestational Surrogacy and the Global Economy” (2012); Berkeley Journal of International Law, “International Commercial Surrogacy” (2012).

Part V (Legal nightmare): Rayden Solicitors, “Re Zs – A cautionary tale of two surrogacy cases” (2025); ALRC submission (2025); Submission to NSW Parliament by Professor Sonia Allan OAM.

Part VI (Adoption): Hatch, “Understanding Your Options: Adoption vs Gestational Surrogacy” (2025); Steven H. Snyder & Associates, “Surrogacy vs. adoption: What to consider when starting a family” (2025); FIH, “Surrogacy vs Adoption – Key Differences Explained” (2025); SurrogateFirst, “Surrogacy vs Adoption: Cost, Pros and Cons” (2025); Georgia Surrogacy Agency, “Costs of Surrogacy and Adoption: A Comparative Guide” (2025); Hatch, “Surrogacy or Adoption: Which Path to Parenthood Costs More?” (2026).

Part VII (Conclusion): Author’s synthesis of all cited data.

End of post.