8 MAY 2026
THE FERTILITY INDUSTRY HAS HEARD THE UN CALL FOR ABOLITION. IT HAS RESPONDED WITH SELF-REGULATION.
PARIS – On 7 May 2026, four of the world’s largest assisted reproductive technology societies (ASPIRE, ESHRE, ASRM, and IFFS) announced the finalisation of “international consensus of the professionals involved in surrogacy, establishing minimum standards in surrogacy”. The announcement, made at the ASPIRE Congress in Beijing before an audience of approximately 3,000 fertility specialists, explicitly acknowledges UN Special Rapporteur Reem Alsalem’s Report A/80/158 and its call for member states to move toward eradicating surrogacy in all its forms.
This report does not advocate for better minimum standards. On the contrary, it calls for the abolition, the complete dismantling of this system of exploitation and systemic violence against women in all its forms. It recommends criminalising those who use surrogacy, banning any profit for third parties, banning advertising, and providing support (not sanctions) to women who carry these pregnancies to term.
Although it references Reem Alsalem’s report, the document finalized in Beijing this week does not comply with any of the recommendations issued by the UN Special Rapporteur. In fact, it proposes that the industry should regulate itself.
ICASM (International Coalition for the Abolition of Surrogate Motherhood), which represents more than 60 feminist organisations in 18 countries across 4 continents, contests the approach adopted
Who drafted these guidelines, and who did not.
According to ASPIRE’s press release, these guidelines were drawn up by ‘representatives of leading fertility societies’ and will be submitted for consultation to ‘members of all participating societies’ prior to their adoption. ASPIRE, ESHRE, ASRM and IFFS represent clinics, doctors and the commercial sector of assisted reproductive technologies. Dr Clare Boothroyd, scientific director of the Beijing Congress, describes these guidelines as “applicable to surrogates, surrogacy agencies, commissioning people and medical experts”.
The guidelines cover consent, psychosocial well-being and medical standards – all areas in which surrogates are the primary stakeholders – and were drafted without their involvement.
No civil society human rights organisations, no independent ethics committee mandated by a UN or intergovernmental body were involved.
Industry-produced standards do not resolve industry-produced harms.
This pattern is well documented. India, Thailand, Cambodia, Ukraine, Georgia and Greece have all hosted surrogacy industries operating within regulatory frameworks; some with minimum standards reminiscent of those currently proposed at the global level. Each has led to the same outcome: exploitation, abandonment, commodification and scandal, followed by new standards, and then the same cycle.
Bromfield and Rotabi (2012) established that 97% of surrogacy arrangements globally involve a structural economic imbalance between the woman who carries the pregnancy and the commissioning parties. No consent protocol can resolve a structurally predatory economic relationship. No clause on psychosocial well-being changes the fact that, by contract, a woman is forced to give up her child.
The UN Special Rapporteur understood this. Her report does not recommend improving the industry’s ethical frameworks. It recommends ending the industry.
ICASM calls on:
The OHCHR special procedures mandate holders, including Rapporteur Alsalem, to officially note that the guidelines drawn up in Beijing do not constitute a response to the recommendations of A/80/158.
EU Member states currently transposing EU Directive 2024/1712, which classifies the exploitation of surrogate motherhood as human trafficking, with a binding deadline of 15 July 2026, to proceed on the basis of that legal instrument, not on the basis of guidelines and not on the basis of guidelines drawn up by the very sector it targets.
Journalists and policymakers covering the ASPIRE Congress to ask the question the guidelines do not answer: where do surrogate mothers stand in this process, and why is the fertility industry responding to an abolitionist objective with a compliance framework?
How is it that this initiative is being rolled out in contravention of all international instruments protecting the rights of women and children?
The International Coalition for the Abolition of Surrogate Motherhood (CIAMS/ICASM) is an international feminist abolitionist coalition of over 60 organisations in 18 countries.
abolition-ms.org –
Key references: UN Report A/80/158 (Alsalem, October 2025) – EU Directive 2024/1712 -Bromfield & Rotabi (2012)