The recent announcement at the ASPIRE Congress 2026, where leading fertility industry bodies proposed “global consensus guidelines” on surrogacy, raises serious ethical and human rights concerns.

According to a recent international announcement on surrogacy guidelines, leading fertility organizations—including ASPIRE, ESHRE, ASRM, and IFFS—have collaborated to develop “minimum standards” for surrogacy practices worldwide. The effort is presented (should we say masqueraded) as a response to mounting concern over exploitation and inconsistent regulation.

However, this framing sits uneasy alongside the broader international context and seems to be a move of desperation from those at the top of the fertility food chain rather than true care for women, children, and families. These “guidelines” come in the wake of a clear and urgent call from the United Nations to move toward the abolition of surrogacy due to its inherent risks of exploitation.

Specifically, the recent report by UN Special Rapporteur Reem Alsalem, interestingly cited at ASPIRE, calls not for improved regulation, but for dismantling the system altogether – through the abolition of surrogacy. Against this backdrop, industry-led “self-regulation” appears not as a solution, but as deflection and strategy for preservation. These guidelines are being advanced in the name of “international cooperation,” yet they emerge from within the same sector that benefits directly from surrogacy arrangements.

As other organizations have pointed out, a fundamental issue lies in who is shaping these guidelines—and who is not. The voices of women who have acted as surrogate mothers, as well as independent human rights experts, are notably absent. Instead, those with direct financial and professional stakes in the continuation of surrogacy are setting the terms of its governance.

Patterns and experience across multiple countries has shown that regulatory frameworks, even when presented as safeguards, fail to prevent systemic harms. Where surrogacy industries have operated under legal or semi-regulated systems, concerns about exploitation, economic coercion, and unequal bargaining power persist—particularly given the structural inequalities between commissioning parents and surrogate mothers. This includes documented maternal health risks associated with surrogacy pregnancies.

The effort to frame surrogacy as an ethical, manageable practice through guidelines risks normalizing a system that international human rights bodies increasingly recognize as incompatible with the dignity and rights of women and children. This new push for “consensus” risks repeating a familiar cycle: acknowledging harm, introducing standards, and continuing practices largely unchanged. It also raises a critical question: can a sector meaningfully regulate practices from which it derives direct financial benefit, or does such an effort primarily serve to legitimize the status quo?

If the goal is truly to uphold human rights, the conversation must continue to move beyond regulation toward abolition. Anything less risks entrenching the very harms that the international community has begun to acknowledge—and condemn.

Ultimately, the question is no longer whether surrogacy can be better regulated. It is whether a system built on deep economic and relational inequalities can ever be made ethically consistent with fundamental human rights.

Until that question is answered honestly and directly, global guidelines—however well intentioned—serve less as protection, and more as justification.

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