There has been a major update in the Arcadia surrogacy scandal: according to a new report from The New Yorker, a Los Angeles dependency court has ruled against reunifying the 21 young children removed from the California home last year. Instead, the children will remain in foster care and are expected to be placed into guardianships or adopted by foster families.

The case began after authorities discovered what investigators described as an institutional-style mansion filled with children produced through a massive commercial surrogacy operation run by Silvia Zhang and Guojun Xuan through their agency, Mark Surrogacy. Allegations included severe abuse, neglect, and the hospitalization of an infant with traumatic head injuries. Even after the children were removed, it was reported that an additional six children across California, Georgia, Virginia, and Pennsylvania were born from surrogate mothers for the couple. According to the article, those children have also been placed in foster care and are awaiting their fate.

I previously interviewed surrogate mother Kayla Elliott, who says she was misled by the couple and only later learned how many surrogate pregnancies were taking place simultaneously.  Kayla’s interview prompted the July 2025 Daily Wire investigation into the alleged China-linked “rent-a-womb” operation and since then the scandal has brought public scrutiny to international surrogacy arrangements, including law reform.

The court’s decision for the first 21 children effectively confirms a permanent rupture in what was presented as a “family” created through mass commercial surrogacy. These children were deliberately brought into the world through dozens of surrogate mothers across multiple states, then raised together in a single household under conditions now substantiated as abusive. What makes this case so unprecedented is certainly the scale, but it is a stark reminder of the intentional design of surrogacy in the first place: children systematically created through third-party reproduction, never to know their genetic mother, and then consolidated into a single home environment, detached from the women who carried them.

As a result, at least 27 children in total are now separated from the circumstances of their conception and birth. Most were carried by surrogate mothers, like Kayla, who were told they were helping intended parents build a family, only to later learn that the pregnancies were part of a much larger operation. An operation that actually isn’t at all illegal. If you have the money and the means, the surrogacy industry paves the path to “parenthood”. This system produced at least 27 children who are now legally severed from their intended family structure, any biological family, and the surrogate mothers who physically brought them into existence, only to face more uncertainty through foster care and adoption.

At the Center for Bioethics and Culture, we believe the Arcadia case exposes the inherent dangers of the surrogacy industry itself — an industry that commodifies women, treats children as products, creates conditions ripe for exploitation and abuse, and creates complex custody and identity separations for children born through it. We will continue fighting to expose these harms and work toward the abolition of commercial surrogacy, especially international surrogacy arrangements that put vulnerable children at risk.

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