There is nothing coincidental about the timing: the opinion of the National Consultative Ethics Committee (CCNE) is expected in mid-November 2026, as soon as the presidential campaign kicks off. The next French bioethics law will be drafted by the majority emerging from this election. What is at stake in these debate halls today, in these questionnaires and contributions, is the framework within which the candidates for the Élysée will have to take a stance on surrogacy.
This framework is itself under international pressure. While France deliberates, a global movement toward regulation is taking shape: in Australia, Canada, certain U.S. states, Greece, Portugal, and now in Latin America, where Mexico, Colombia, and Argentina have become the main alternative destinations following the successive closure of the Indian, Thai, and Ukrainian markets, with the recurring argument that regulation is better than a legal vacuum. ICASM challenges this premise: regulation does not protect women; it shifts exploitation to the least protected countries, as the successive closures of these markets have demonstrated time and again.
ICASM has chosen to be part of this process, with its arguments, data, and allies, rather than letting it unfold without an abolitionist voice.
National Consultation:
Topic: Reproduction and Embryology
Submitted by: International Coalition for the Abolition of Surrogate Motherhood (ICASM) – abolition-ms.org
Representatives: Marie-Josèphe Devillers / Ana-Luana Stoicea Deram / Berta O. García
Date: May 2026
- 1. Preliminary Position
ICASM is an international feminist abolitionist coalition comprising approximately 60 organizations in 18 countries, co-founded by Marie-Josèphe Devillers and Ana-Luana Stoicea Deram, authors of Ventres à Louer (La Découverte, 2022) and Towards the Abolition of Surrogate Motherhood (Spinifex, 2021). We submit this contribution in response to the question posed by the EGB 2026: “Should surrogacy be authorized in the future, and if so, under what conditions?”.
Our answer is unequivocal: no. Not in any form. Under no circumstances.
Surrogacy is not a medical solution to infertility. It is a practice that objectifies women’s reproductive capacity and treats children as contractual commodities. Regulation is not an option: to regulate is to legitimize what must be abolished. Existing prohibitions (Article 16-7 of the Civil Code and Article 227-12 of the Penal Code) are consistent with the international human rights framework and require reinforcement, not reconsideration.
This position is consistent with CCNE Opinion 126 (2017), which established that consent is not sufficient to negate the violation of human dignity, that altruism does not remove fundamental ethical objections, and that the non-disposability of the body is a matter of public policy. These conclusions remain fully valid in 2026.
There is no “right to a child.” No text of international, European, or national law enshrines such a right. What does exist is the child’s right to not be treated as an object, guaranteed by the Convention on the Rights of the Child (Art. 7 and 35). Equality between people, regardless of their sexual orientation, cannot be built on the exploitation of another person’s body. No “right to parenthood” can take precedence over a woman’s fundamental right not to be exploited for her reproductive capacity.
2 – Scientific and medical data
Harming the health of surrogate mothers
Söderström-Anttila et al. (BMJ, 2024) and Tikkanen et al. (BJOG, 2022) have reported rates of obstetrical complications 2 to 3 times higher than those of ordinary pregnancies : high blood pressure, gestational diabetes, premature birth, haemorrhaging. These are structural risks, they are inherent to hormonal stimulation protocols and to embryo transfer and they do not diminish with regulation, they are its consequences.
Psychological trauma has also been reported. Jadva et al. (2003, replicated in 2021) have shown that 67% of surrogate mothers report significant psychological distress after being separated from the child. These figures do not depend on the “commercial” or “compassionate” character of the agreement. Saying that surrogacy is a “gift” masks the damage, it does not do away with it.*
Breaking the link between mother and child immediately after birth
The immediate separation of the child from the woman who has just given birth to it is a well-documented obstetrical and neurological violence. It disrupts the bonding process started during the pregnancy, it deprives the child of its mother’s milk and of its immunological and neurological benefits, and it exposes the surrogate mother to a trauma of separation that contract law is unable to prevent. Special Rapporteur Alsalem (A/80/158) identifies this separation as one of the structural markers of the inherent violence of this practise.
Complications are not recorded at all
To this day, there is no national or international systematic record of the medical complications faced by surrogate mothers and egg donors. Golombok (2023) shows that no longitudinal independent survey has demonstrated any long-time absence of damage for children born from surrogacy. The reproductive industry produces data on its rate of success without producing any data on its rate of failure or on its rate of trauma for the mothers.
This no inadvertent omission. This is how the market can work. No regulator can protect women from complications that are not recorded.
Egg donors: a population whose data are not recorded
Egg donors are subjected to high dosage ovarian stimulations, to aspiration under a general anaesthetic, but their long-term effects (gynaecological cancers, premature ovarian failure, subsequent infertility) have not been recorded in any longitudinal independent survey. Their complications have not been recorded. Any extension of IVF, including ROPA, increases automatically the demand for eggs, and consequently the exposure of economically vulnerable women to procedures whose long-term risks remain unknown.
Economic structural constraints
WHO (2023, Deonandan et al.) shows that 85% of surrogate mothers come from low- or medium- income countries. Bromfield & Rotabi (2012) : 97% of the agreements imply a structural economical imbalance. This is not a market of free choices under neutral conditions, but a system for the extraction of poor women’s reproductive labour to the benefit of the richest.
Distinguishing between “commercial” surrogacy and so-called “compassionate” surrogacy does not erase this structural reality. As we can see from the Irish, Greek and British examples, indirect payment works in practise as a financial compensation. Whatever name we give it, it is equally detrimental.
The rights of the child and the accounts of persons born from surrogacy
Golombok (2023) shows that no longitudinal independent survey has demonstrated any long-term absence of damage for children born from surrogacy. As soon as they are born, these children are deprived of the link with the woman who had borne them, which directly contradicts article 7 of the CIDE (Convention on the rights of the child) (right to know its parents and to be raised by them) and article 35 (protection against selling and trafficking).
Olivia Maurel is an adult born from surrogacy and spokesperson for the Declaration of Casablanca. Her testimony brings direct and irrefutable evidence of the long-term psychological consequences of this practise: identity dissociation, separation trauma, querying the contractual status of one’s birth. This testimony has been silenced in the debates at the EGB 2026. ICASM wants it to be placed at the centre of CCNE’s deliberations and wants the citizens’ committee CESE to organise a formal hearing with Olivia Maurel.
3 –The International legal framework
The European guideline 2024/1712 – binding requirement
Adopted with a vote of 563 for, the Guideline 2024/1712 describes the exploitation of surrogacy as a form of human trafficking. France is bound to implement it before July 2026 (six weeks after the EGB synthesis).
Direct conflict. Any CCNE decision giving access to surrogacy would be in conflict with a requirement of the binding European law which is already being implemented. This conflict must be explicitly recorded in the national synthesis.
Alsalem Report A/80/158 (UNO, October 2025)
The Special Rapporteur at UN describes surrogacy as « a system of violence, of exploitation and of abuse” and calls for a binding legislative instrument for its universal abolition.
The Palermo Protocol and the missing screening protocols
Agreements for international surrogacy meet several components of the definition for human trafficking in accordance with the Palermo Protocol : hiring targeting economic weaknesses, transnational organisation, human trafficking for money. ICASM points out that there is no international coordinated protocol for early detection of human trafficking situations for reproductive purposes. This deliberate institutional vacuum allows the surrogacy industry to operate.
4 –Regulation does not erase exploitation, it displaces it
The recent history of international surrogacy disproves that regulation would make it possible to protect women. Reproductive Biomedicine Online (2023)and Rudrappa (2017) report an ongoing process : when a country regulates or bans surrogacy after scandals are reported, the same clinics, the same agencies and the same physicians move to an unprotected country, and duplicate the same abuse.
This cycle has been recorded : India (restriction 2012, ban for foreigners 2015) → Thailand, Nepal, Cambodia (banning after scandals, 2015-2016) → Ukraine (more than a quarter of the global market before 2022) → Georgia, Kenya, Mexico, Colombia. With every regulation, exploitation moves to the women living in less -well protected and often poorer countries, without ever being abolished.
The Kenyan case has been particularly well recorded. The article Chains of extraction (PMC, 2024) shows that the closure of the Indian market has led the IVF agencies in India to redirect Kenya’s reproductive health infrastructure towards an international consumer market to the detriment of its female citizens, in a country that is going through a crisis with a high rate of maternal death. In the countries where it is present, the surrogacy industry captures the resources of the reproductive health systems.
In France, the regulation of the market for international adoption took decades and involved elaborate international legal instruments. When it comes to contracts, to border crossing and to medicine, surrogacy is a very highly complicated market. And if these instruments of regulation existed, they would displace the exploitation to other less well protected countries.
5 – The ROPA method: a specific case of surrogacy logic
The ROPA method, whose EGB debate has been postponed twice, distinguishes between the woman who provides the eggs and the woman who carries the embryo in a female couple, a mechanism structurally identical to that of surrogacy. The Espace Éthique IDF’s official brochure itself acknowledges that ROPA is prohibited “due to the ban on non-anonymous donations and surrogacy.” Lifting the ban on ROPA would weaken the ban on surrogacy.
6 – On the Legitimacy of This Consultation
Including surrogacy under the heading “Reproduction and Embryology” replicates an erroneous framing. Surrogacy is not a medical issue; it is an issue of exploitation. The relevant frameworks are: violence against women, human trafficking, the commodification of childhood, and structural economic coercion.
ICASM observes that it falls to a committee of appointed experts (researchers, lawyers, doctors, philosophers, and representatives of major religious traditions) all appointed based on their institutional expertise, to decide what is “ethical” for women, some of whom have never had access to this debate, do not speak French, give birth to children for foreign commissioning parents in countries lacking protections, and whose complications are not recorded in any registry. The formally gender-balanced composition of the CCNE does not resolve this fundamental issue: no member of the CCNE is a former surrogate mother, an egg donor, or a person born via surrogacy who opposes this practice
ICASM requests that the CCNE’s opinion explicitly mention the limits of its own legitimacy to rule on the exploitation of women’s bodies without the inclusion of their direct voices.
The national summary must also take into account the methodological biases documented in the EGB 2026 process: a panel lacking any abolitionist representative at the April 22 debate, a Wooclap questionnaire without measures of representativeness, and results presented as an indicator of public opinion.
7 – Conclusion and formal requirements
ICASM calls on the CCNE to:
– Affirm that no form of surrogacy, including ROPA, is compatible with the protection of women’s rights and children’s rights.
– Confirm the validity of Opinion 126 (2017) and recommend the retention and strengthening of Articles 16-7 of the Civil Code and 227-12 of the Penal Code.
– Incorporate Directive 2024/1712 and the Alsalem report A/80/158 into its November 2026 opinion.
– Hear testimony from Olivia Maurel and those born through surrogacy opposed to this practice within the framework of the CESE Citizens’ Committee.
– Document the absence of records of complications among surrogate mothers and egg donors as a structural shortcoming.
– Mention in the national summary the lack of public debate on ROPA and the methodological biases of the 2026 EGB process.
There is no such thing as “ethical” surrogacy. The question facing France is not how to regulate this practice, but whether or not it intends to remain among the countries that refuse to participate in the reproductive exploitation of women.
References
WHO / Deonandan et al. (2023) – 85% of surrogate mothers come from low- or middle-income backgrounds.
Bromfield & Rotabi (2012) – 97% of arrangements involve a structural economic imbalance.
Söderström-Anttila et al. / BMJ (2024) + Tikkanen et al. / BJOG (2022) – obstetric complications ×2-3.
Jadva et al. (2003, replicated 2021) – 67% of psychological sequelae.
Golombok (2023) – no independent longitudinal studies on children born via surrogacy.
Alsalem, R. – Report A/80/158, UN, October 2025 – identification of mother-child separation as structural violence.
EU Directive 2024/1712 – reproductive exploitation as trafficking. Transposition: 15 July 2026.
CCNE – Opinion 126 (2017) – prohibition of surrogacy, including altruistic surrogacy.
Palermo Protocol (2000).
CRC (1989), arts. 7 and 35.
French Civil Code, art. 16-7. Criminal Code, Art. 227-12.
HCCH – conclusion of work on parentage through surrogacy, March 2026, due to lack of consensus.
Reproductive BioMedicine Online (2023) – relocation of clinics and doctors following regulation: India → Thailand → Nepal/Cambodia → Ukraine → Georgia/Kenya.
Rudrappa, S. (2017), LSE – ‘surrogate mothers as cargo carriers across borders’: relocation of exploitation following regulation.
Chains of extraction (PMC, 2024) – reorientation of Kenya’s reproductive health infrastructure towards international clients following a ban in India.
Devillers, M.-J. & Stoicea-Deram, A.-L. – Ventres à Louer (La Découverte, 2022) / Towards the Abolition of Surrogate Motherhood (Spinifex Press, 2021).