On May 2nd 2026, LeMonde.fr/idées published an opinion piece by Geneviève Delaisi de Perceval and Israël Nisand calling for the legalization of surrogacy in France, in the name of a process of “psychic adoption” that would replace pregnancy as the foundation of motherhood. This opinion piece included no bibliographic reference, no epidemiological data, and it failed to mention either French law, international law, or the United Nations’ Special Rapporteur’s report which described surrogacy as reproductive violence (A/80/158, October 2025), or the European guideline 2024/1712 which classified the exploitation caused by surrogacy as a form of human trafficking.
The context in which this opinion piece was published is particular. The general assemblies on bioethics 2026 are ongoing. The CCNE (National Advisory Committee on Ethics) will submit a report in June, give an opinion in November, which could lead to a modification of the law on bioethics in 2028. On April 22nd 2026, during a panel discussion organized by L’espace éthique Île-de-France, a woman who was quoting Olivia Maurel – a woman born by surrogacy and opposed to the practise – was violently interrupted and berated by a dozen of men in the venue without eliciting any efficient response from the moderator to stop this bullying. During the same panel discussion, the only panellist who tried to remind the other members of the panel of the conclusion reached in the CCNE’s Notice 126 (the whole committee had ruled against surrogacy) was personally attacked, which only elicited a short comment from the moderator. ICASM has substantiated these incidents and this methodological bias of the process in a formal letter to CCNE’s president and in its written contribution to the general assemblies on bioethics 2026.
This is the context in which ICASM submitted this opinion piece to Idées/Débats du Monde, in response to the opinion piece by Delaisi/Nisand. It did not take 24 hours for it to be rejected.
The question raised by ICASM is this: when a newspaper publishes an opinion piece advocating the legalization of surrogacy, without any references, without legal framework, without mentioning the women who go through it, the children born from it, and then, within 24 hours, refuses to publish a contradictory and well-sourced opinion piece from an international coalition of 60 organisations from 18 countries, what is left of pluralism in a discussion ?
We are now publishing this opinion piece verbatim, including its sources, because the French bioethics debate cannot be one-sided.
Surrogacy: no, motherhood cannot be reduced to a “process of psychic adoption”.
In an opinion piece published in Le Monde, a psychoanalyst and a gynaecologist call for the legalization of surrogacy in France in the name of a “psychic adoption” which would define motherhood better than pregnancy and childbirth. This is the answer from the International Coalition for the Abolition of Surrogacy, which represents 60 organisations in 18 countries.
By calling for France to “put a stop to the undue ostracism” of surrogacy, the authors take over the speech components used by the procreation market : promotion of the “parental project”, concealment of the material conditions of pregnancy, minimisation of medical risks, erasure of the women bearing the children.
Words have meaning : the woman who gives birth is the mother
The core of the argument is based on a particular conceptual operation: replace the physical experience of pregnancy and childbirth by some supposedly psychoanalytic notion, “psychic adoption”, which has no basis in indexed medical literature and does not appear in any known classification. This is no insignificant shift. It allows them to deprive the pregnant woman of her status of mother-to-be and to transfer it to the commissioning parents.
Now, motherhood is not an indeterminate concept. It is both a physiological process and a biographical event, it grows in a woman’s body during nine months of pregnancy and culminates in childbirth. This is attested by science: epigenetics shows that the uterine environment modifies the foetus’s gene expression, micro chimerism makes the child’s cells migrate in the mother’s body and linger there for decades, and the new-born recognizes the voice of the woman who has borne it from the very first moments of its life. Reducing all this to “a womb where it has been growing” is pure ideology. It is also an insult to all those women who have been pregnant and have given birth to a child. This is acknowledged by French law: according to article16-7 of the civil code, “any agreement about procreation or gestation on behalf of others is null.” Article 227-12 paragraph 3 of the penal code punishes the brokers. There is nothing archaic about this prohibition: it protects the inalienability of the human body and marks the rejection of the commodification of women and children.
A “scientific” statement devoid of science
To justify their theory, the authors mention denial of pregnancy. The explanation is as surprising as it is revealing: because some women are not aware that they are pregnant, pregnancy would not be fundamental to motherhood. This argument confuses pathology (pregnancy denial is classified as a psychiatric disorder in DSM-5, and affects 1 pregnancy out of 475) with normal behaviour. It is also a trivial argument pretending to be a demonstration: this kind of reasoning would be rejected by any peer-reviewed medical journal. Even more paradoxically, pregnancy denial proves the authors’ theory wrong. Even when a woman ignores her pregnancy, she is, biologically and physiologically, the mother. Motherhood is primarily physical before it is psychological.
On the other hand, what does indexed medical literacy literature say? That for surrogate mothers, the risk of obstetrical complications is two or three times superior than for natural pregnancies (Söderström-Anttila, BMJ; Tikkaren, BJOG 2022). That 67% of surrogate mothers report psychological trauma in the medium-term (Jadva et al., 2003, replicated in 2021). That Dr Velez’s Canadian group concerning 863 017 live births confirms an increased and significant medical risk (JAMA Network Open, 2025). And that there has to this day never been an independent longitudinal survey of the consequences for children born from surrogacy (Golombok, 2023). The authors mention none of these surveys.
Note that the opinion piece talks about “commissioning mothers”, but surrogacy is accessible to single men: are they also affected by a “psychic pregnancy”?
Scheduled separation: a wound created by adults
The authors state that “ a child to whom things are explained sensibly” can understand. This statement confuses cognition and emotion. The literature that deals with bonding (Bowlby, Schore) shows that the link between mother and child develops in the womb; this is a pre-verbal wound. Adopted children are four times more at risk of committing suicide, and they are looking for their mother, not for the “uterus in which they grew”. But there is a fundamental difference between adoption and surrogacy. Adoption is a response to a broken relationship. Surrogacy deliberately engineers the separation: adults organize it, finance it, formalize it even before conception. Olivia Maurel, born from surrogacy, feminist and spokesperson for the Declaration of Casablanca, campaigns against this practice (see her book Où es-tu Maman?).
Where are the women?
International data are clear: 85 % of surrogate mothers in the world come from low income or medium income countries (OMS, 2023; Deonandan et al). The economic pattern of 97 % of surrogacy contracts reveals a structural imbalance between the commissioners and the surrogate mothers. (Bromfield and Rotabi, 2012). In the United States, a surrogacy cycle costs between 100 000 et 150 000 dollars; the surrogate mother gets less than 25 % of that amount. This is not solidarity, it is a poverty trade-off.
The authors write that “surrogate mothers’ motivations are largely unknown”. This is not true. They have been documented, survey after survey (Pande, 2010; Rudrappa, 2015; Jacobson, 2016; Suryanarayanan, 2018): their main motivation is economic as a response to a vulnerable situation. Failing to say this means erasing women while promoting reproductive exploitation.
The international framework that these authors ignore
The Alsalem Report (A/80/158, October 2025) describes surrogacy as reproductive violence. The Guideline 2024/1712 ranks the exploitation related to surrogacy among forms of human trafficking. In March 2026, the Hague Conference suspended its activities linked to the worldwide promotion of surrogacy. The CCNE itself, in its previous recommendations adopted unanimously, has considered surrogacy as violence against women and children. Abolition is not a conservative cause: it is a universal feminist view. The national advisory committee on ethics must not be used as a Trojan horse to dismantle the protections against the transformation of the human body into an economic asset.
Redefining motherhood without women is a political project
What the authors suggest is taking out pregnancy and childbirth to redefine motherhood. They suggest turning the pregnant woman into a provisional container. They suggest substituting the commissioners’ “parental project” for the physical experience of the woman who gets involved, reduces her activities, submits to medical examinations. What they say is essentially very patriarchal: the surrogate mother bears a foetus “which is not hers” and “that she gets ready to give back”, pregnancy to them is passive and the child is a transferable object. Here women’s and children’s commodification is turned into a suitable model. It is a political endeavour on behalf of a worldwide market worth about 200 billiards of dollars. It has nothing in common with a Republic’s national advisory committee on ethics whose fundamental principles include the inalienability of the human body.
French law must not change. It must be implemented.
International Coalition for the Abolition of Surrogate Motherhood (ICASM)
60+ organisations – 18 countries
abolition-ms.org