Press Release: Supreme Court Decision Fails to Protect Women and Children Through Birth Tourism and Human Trafficking

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

June 30, 2026

Supreme Court Decision Fails to Protect Women and Children Through Birth Tourism and Human Trafficking

The Center for Bioethics and Culture today expressed profound disappointment regarding the Supreme Court’s ruling rejecting President Trump’s executive order and reaffirming birthright citizenship under the Fourteenth Amendment.

Although the Court framed its decision as an exercise in constitutional interpretation, the ruling fails to engage substantively with the empirical realities at the center of the controversy: women and children are being systematically exploited by actors who manipulate U.S. immigration law for commercial profit, citizenship acquisition, and immigration advantage.

As Kallie Fell, Executive Director of the Center for Bioethics and Culture, stated, “The Constitution should never be interpreted in a way that turns a blind eye to the exploitation of women and the instrumentalization of children. Human dignity must remain the guiding principle of any legal framework governing citizenship and immigration.”

The prevailing application of birthright citizenship has created powerful incentives for birth tourism, the abuse of international surrogacy arrangements, and trafficking schemes that treat women and children not as persons possessing inherent dignity, but as instruments for legal and commercial gain. Women in the United States should not be reduced to vehicles for the procurement of citizenship. Children should never be treated as legal instruments, commodities, or expedients for evading immigration law.

The Court’s decision leaves unresolved a serious and growing problem: U.S. law continues to reward those who exploit vulnerable women, contract for the production of children, or manipulate childbirth for immigration advantage, while law-abiding immigrants continue to comply with established legal processes in good faith.

The Center for Bioethics and Culture therefore calls on Congress and state legislatures to address the practical realities the Court declined to confront. The United States must enact legislation that protects women from exploitation, prevents human trafficking, closes surrogacy loopholes, and ensures that no child is brought into the world as part of a deliberate scheme to circumvent immigration law.

“A child is not a document, and a woman’s body is not a vessel for immigration strategy”, Fell stated. “The reality we hear from too many women is consistent: international surrogacy arrangements often involve coercion, power imbalances, and post-birth disputes that leave mothers and children vulnerable. Following today’s decision, the responsibility now shifts to legislatures to act decisively and close the legal pathways that enable cross-border surrogacy arrangements rooted in inequality and exploitation.”

The Center for Bioethics and Culture remains committed to defending human dignity, protecting women and children from exploitation, and exposing the harms that arise when reproductive technology, immigration incentives, and commercial interests intersect.

Media Contact:
The Center for Bioethics and Culture Network
Kirstin Wallace, Development Director
kirstin.wallace@cbc-network.org
926.407.2660
cbc-network.org