On 18 December, feminist organisations from across Australia will participate in a roundtable discussion on the Australian Law Reform Commission’s review of surrogacy laws. This review will shape national policy affecting women and children for years to come. Yet the process through which this review is being conducted raises fundamental questions about impartiality, democratic participation, and compliance with Australia’s international human rights obligations.
Women’s organisations have been systematically excluded from early policy development, whilst those with direct financial interests in surrogacy expansion have shaped the review’s direction. The result is a predetermined framework that will be difficult to challenge, even as evidence of exploitation and harm mounts. Here we set out what has gone wrong and what must change.
Timing and consultation
In July 2025, a coalition of independent feminist organisations submitted a detailed case to the ALRC outlining why surrogacy must be abolished, and documenting the medical, psychological and economic harms inherent in surrogacy arrangements. We argued that women must be recognised as primary stakeholders in any review of this nature.
The ALRC released its Discussion Paper in November 2025, setting out 41 proposals for how to regulate surrogacy. Submissions close on 19 December. A roundtable with feminist organisations has been scheduled for 18 December — one day before the submission deadline.
This timing warrants reflection. Women’s organisations were not consulted early in the process, when fundamental questions about scope and direction were being determined. We are not represented on the advisory committee and so we have not been able to contribute to the framing of the Discussion Paper. We are now being invited to participate — with one hour allocated for a dozen organisations — after the Commission’s substantive review direction has already been proposed.
This structure — consultation with the major stakeholder group after the main work has been done, and in a constrained timeframe — falls short of what meaningful democratic participation requires.
Advisory committee composition and conflicts of interest
Based on an analysis of publicly available information, the ALRC’s advisory committee includes eight members with direct professional or financial interests in surrogacy expansion: fertility specialists, specialist surrogacy lawyers, surrogacy counsellors, and organisations advocating for surrogacy access. No abolitionist feminist organisations are represented.
This creates what governance scholars term ‘structural capture’: those advising on regulation of an industry are the professionals whose livelihoods depend on that industry expanding. The ALRC’s corporate governance framework requires transparent disclosure and management of material conflicts of interest. Public explanation of how these overlaps have been assessed — and what measures are in place to ensure inquiry independence — should be provided.
CEDAW compliance
Australia is bound by CEDAW (the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women), which places specific obligations on government when developing policy affecting women.
Article 7 requires that women be fully and equally involved in decision-making. Meaningful participation occurs when women’s groups can help shape inquiry scope and direction. Late-stage consultation, in a compressed timeframe after main proposal decisions have been made, does not meet this standard.
Articles 2 and 3 require States to adopt measures eliminating discrimination and ensuring women’s full development and advancement. This requires rigorous analysis of whether major reforms advance substantive equality in practice, particularly for vulnerable women. The Discussion Paper does not present analysis of how surrogacy expansion would affect economically vulnerable women, what exploitation risks may exist for young surrogate mothers, or how automatic parentage transfer may affect maternal identity and reinforce reproductive commodification of women and girls.
Article 5 requires States to eliminate practices reducing women to reproductive function or treating reproductive capacity as purchasable. The Discussion Paper proposes to formalise and expand payments to surrogate mothers. It does not analyse whether this monetisation of pregnancy commodifies women’s reproductive capacity and reinforces stereotypes about reproductive labour as a purchasable service.
Questions the Commission must answer
The governance failures documented above raise fundamental questions about the integrity of this review — questions that the Feminist Legal Clinic and other organisations in the coalition are also raising. The Commission should explain on the public record how the advisory committee was selected and assessed for independence from industry interests; how material and perceived conflicts of interest were managed for each member; why the Discussion Paper contemplates commercial surrogacy arrangements when the formal Terms of Reference direct the ALRC to focus on altruistic surrogacy; and on what legal and ethical basis private contracts between commissioning adults can override fundamental human rights protections.
Furthermore, the Commission cannot proceed with proposals to facilitate surrogacy without violating Australia’s obligations under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which prohibits the sale of children: the Commission must explain to the Australian public why it is contemplating reforms that would breach these fundamental human rights protections, rather than upholding them.
Until the Commission answers these questions clearly and on the public record, it cannot reasonably claim that this process meets basic standards of impartiality, transparency, or compliance with Australia’s international human rights obligations.
Participation in good faith
We are attending the roundtable on 18 December because our participation is an opportunity to place governance concerns on the formal record. We intend to raise questions about advisory committee selection, conflict management, and the Commission’s assessment of its CEDAW obligations.
Our attendance should not be interpreted as endorsement of the process; rather, it reflects our commitment to ensuring that feminist evidence and analysis are formally documented within this inquiry, regardless of the process limitations. The governance questions we raise — about impartiality, transparency and international law compliance — are substantive and important. They will be part of our written submission to the ALRC.
Our stance on abolition remains unchanged. We remain unequivocally abolitionist because harm minimisation approaches in exploitation contexts — as demonstrated in prostitution, child labour, and surrogacy itself — often entrench the practice and enable those who benefit from the exploitation of women and girls whilst claiming to protect us. We hold that engaging in detailed proposals to fix the most egregious wrongs signals to government that prohibition is unrealistic, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. We will not negotiate away our core principle that surrogacy must be abolished before we have secured genuine inclusion of abolitionists at advisory level, extension of the consultation process, or a pause to this predetermined review.
The integrity of law reform processes matters: it is as important as the policy content itself. Our position on abolition is evidence-based and longstanding and in attending this roundtable we will engage constructively with the governance flaws of the review. We wish to be transparent about both.
We do not regulate the terms of our own defeat.
