AAWAA has responded to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls (SRVAWG)’s call for input for her upcoming report to the General Assembly’s 80th session, specifically addressing the theme of surrogacy and its relationship to violence against women and girls.
AAWAA’s submission makes our position unequivocal: All forms of surrogacy constitute sex-based, state-sanctioned violence and systemic exploitation of women and girls. Attempts to regulate or sanitise surrogacy arrangements only entrench these harms. We argue that only a universal ban can address the legal, policy, and ethical violations inherent in surrogacy, and that prohibition is the necessary step to uphold human rights and prevent further harm.
Our key finding: Surrogacy is state-sanctioned violence against women
Medical violence
Surrogacy exposes women to invasive, high-risk medical procedures—including hormone treatments, embryo transfers, and caesarean sections—often without full informed consent. Contracts frequently grant commissioning parents control over medical decisions, including forced abortions or fetal reductions. The health risks are significant, and states rarely ensure adequate post-pregnancy care, leaving women to bear lifelong consequences. The recent scandal at Greece’s Mediterranean Fertility Institute is a stark example of how legal frameworks can enable the confinement and abuse of surrogates under state sanction.
Economic violence
Surrogacy exploits women’s economic vulnerability. Poor women, including military spouses in the U.S. and marginalised women in India, are targeted for recruitment. Payments rarely compensate for the risks, and many surrogates face wage theft or contract breaches. Cross-border surrogacy in unregulated markets (such as Cambodia and Ukraine) traps women in cycles of poverty, while countries such as Australia criminalise domestic commercial surrogacy but allow overseas arrangements, effectively outsourcing exploitation.
Psychological violence
Surrogacy inflicts profound psychological harm. Surrogates report emotional detachment, grief, and depression after relinquishing children. Many are pressured to suppress natural attachment, and experience isolation and a lack of psychological support. Australian courts routinely prioritise commissioning parents’ interests over surrogates’ rights, especially in overseas arrangements, legitimising exploitation after the fact.
Australia’s legal landscape: A patchwork that enables exploitation
Australia’s surrogacy laws are fragmented across states and territories. While all jurisdictions prohibit commercial surrogacy and only permit ‘altruistic’ surrogacy under strict conditions, significant loopholes allow Australians to commission surrogacy overseas with little consequence. Since 2010, over 3,000 children have been born via overseas surrogacy to Australian parents—yet not a single prosecution has occurred under state laws criminalising the practice. This ineffective enforcement allows exploitation to continue unchecked.
Surrogacy and human rights: Our international obligations
AAWAA’s submission highlights that surrogacy is a form of state-sanctioned violence against women and girls, violating multiple international human rights instruments, including:
- CEDAW: Requires states to suppress all forms of trafficking and the exploitation of women, and to eliminate stereotypes that reduce women to reproductive vessels.
- Palermo Protocol: Defines trafficking as involving recruitment, transfer, or harbouring of persons for exploitation—a definition that commercial surrogacy involving international travel often meets.
What we are calling for
Nationally
- Prohibit all forms of surrogacy—commercial and ‘altruistic’.
- Criminalise facilitation, brokerage, and advertising of surrogacy.
- Apply prohibitions extraterritorially to prevent cross-border circumvention.
- Integrate prohibitions into broader anti-trafficking and human rights frameworks.
Internationally
- Develop binding conventions and protocols that explicitly define surrogacy as exploitation.
- Establish universal standards recognising surrogacy as violence against women and girls.
Our conclusion
AAWAA’s submission to the UN Special Rapporteur is clear: surrogacy is state-sanctioned violence against women and girls. While we recognise the grief of infertility, individual aspirations for parenthood cannot justify systemic violence and exploitation. Only a prohibitionist approach will uphold dignity, equality, and justice for women and girls everywhere.
Read the full submission below, which includes our references.
