In the Philippines, surrogacy is nevertheless developing in a legal vacuum, which, in addition to the practice itself, encourages its deployment in a clandestine manner. This phenomenon, which is still marginal at the national level, is expanding rapidly in the transnational context, especially in a country that massively exports its female workforce to precarious jobs abroad. Filipino women, often young, poor, and poorly informed, become the target of international networks exploiting their labor force under the guise of economic opportunities. In the face of these practices, the Philippine state remains passive, even complicit, insofar as this trade is part of a logic of migratory profitability supported by public institutions.
A legal vacuum that makes surrogacy de facto illegal
As explained, there is currently no law that explicitly legalises or prohibits surrogacy in the Philippines[I]. However, several existing legal provisions allow commercial surrogacy to be assimilated to a form of human trafficking. Republic Act No. 9208[ii] named the Anti Trafficking in Persons Act, as amended by Philippine law, includes in its definition of trafficking “the extraction or exploitation of reproductive organs” or “the manipulation of women’s bodies for reproductive purposes, even with their consent, when there is exploitation or profit by a third party.” In addition, the Anti-Trafficking Law RA 10364[iii] can be invoked: it prohibits the recruitment of a person “under the pretext of domestic employment or training” for prostitution or sexual exploitation, and prohibits the provision, adoption or receipt of a child for the purpose of exploitation or sale. However, in practice, paid surrogacy “contracts” are often similar to illicit channels. This legal ambiguity has had the paradoxical effect of criminalizing women recruited as surrogate mothers abroad, instead of recognizing their situation as victims. For example, thirteen Filipino women were convicted by the Cambodian justice system of “trafficking” after acting as commercial carriers[iv].
Transnational surrogacy, trafficking networks at work
In October 2024, the arrest of 20 Filipino women leaving for Cambodia drew attention to the existence of organized transnational surrogacy networks. These women had been recruited via Facebook and smuggled and then impregnated in vitro in clandestine clinics. Thirteen of them were already pregnant at the time of their arrest[v]. According to the immigration office, this case is far from isolated because recruitment networks exploit the precariousness of poor women, often from rural provinces, by promising them up to 700,000 pesos, which corresponds to more than €11,000 (while the minimum wage is only €10 per day), to carry a child intended for foreign clients[vi].
The intermediaries are in most cases Filipino agents working for clinics or agencies located in Georgia, Cambodia or Ukraine. In December 2024, two more women were intercepted at Manila airport while trying to reach Georgia with fake travel documents[vii].
As the Georgian state has become a new global hub for commercial surrogacy, this case reveals the cross-border nature of the market and the active co-optation of women from the Global South to meet the demand of the North[viii].
An economic strategy based on the export of women
This phenomenon is part of a broader neoliberal economic policy. Since the 1980s, the Philippines has institutionalized the export of female labor[ix]. Every year, about 2.2 million[x] Filipinos go to work abroad or renew their contracts, nearly 60% of whom are women, mainly in the domestic work, care for the elderly and health sectors (care professions)[xi].However, behind the promise of socio-economic advancement, the Philippine government exploits the precariousness of certain particularly vulnerable sections of the population, in order to take advantage of it, “transforming forms of subordination into opportunities”[xii].This migration strategy is economically victorious because it generates nearly $32 billion in annual remittances in 2017, or about 10% of the country’s GDP[xiii].
Filipino women’s bodies have become a tool of the national migration strategy. It is part of an economic model where the nation “exports” care workers to generate foreign exchange. In this context, surrogacy can appear as a reproductive extension of this model: the uterus becomes a productive space at the service of a foreign client.
Operating conditions and vitiated consent
Testimonies collected by IOM and the Philippine Embassy in Phnom Penh describe conditions amounting to reproductive detention. Surrogate mothers are locked up in houses called “clinics”, monitored, often malnourished, subjected to hormonal injections and deprived of any medical autonomy. Once the child is born, they are sent back to the Philippines with partial pay, without medical or psychological follow-up[xiv].
Under these conditions, women’s consent is inherently flawed. These women are always recruited under the promise of clean and well-paid work, they discover on the spot that they are reduced to a gestational role, without information on the medical risks, or on the rights of the child they carry. Once in the spiral, they can no longer get out of it.
Institutional reactions
Faced with the scale of the phenomenon, some political voices are being raised. In October 2024, Senator Risa Hontiveros demanded a parliamentary inquiry into reproductive trafficking, implying that some migration agents are colluding with criminal networks [xv]. OFW party representative Marissa Magsino raised the possibility of a law specifically prohibiting commercial surrogacy involving Filipino women, including abroad[xvi].
The country also lacks a reintegration or protection mechanism for women who have served as surrogate mothers. No prevention campaign has been carried out at the national level. Official rhetoric is limited to moralizing messages about the dangers of trafficking, as well as religious considerations[xvii], without questioning the migration economic model from which it emerged.
[i] Aguiling-Pangalangan, E. H. (2019, June). Not bone of my bone but still my own: Parents and children when law and technology unbundle traditional identities. https://libpros.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/final-paper-lp-lecture-adoptionsurrogacy.-6.2019.pdf#:~:text=Without%20legal%20parameters%2C%20%E2%80%9Cthe%20profit,the%20mercy%20of%20market%20forces
[ii] Republic Act No. 9208 —Anti-Trafficking in Persons Act of 2003(Philippines). (2003, May 26). Philippine Commission on Women.https://pcw.gov.ph/republic-act-9208-anti-trafficking-in-persons-act-of-2003/
Senate of the Philippines. (2024, October 16). P.S.R. No. 1211 https://web.senate.gov.ph/lisdata/4511240997!.pdf#:~:text=WHEREAS%2C%20Republic%20Act%20No,of%20exploitation%20or%20trading%20them
[iv] Genetics. (2024, December 3).Surrogacy: 13 Filipino women sentenced in Cambodia. https://genethique.org/gpa-13-femmes-philippines-condamnees-au-cambodge/
[v] Associated Press. (2024, October 12). Pregnant Philippine women arrested in Cambodia for surrogacy could be prosecuted after giving birth. https://apnews.com/article/surrogacy-human-trafficking-law-0ac21e8d40a0015dba0d62fb3b347601
[vi] Al Jazeera English / 101 East. (2024, November 14).Inside the Philippines’ underground surrogacy industry
. YouTube.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEocVVzjz8k&t=556s
Bureau of Immigration (Philippines). (2024, December 9). BI stops another illegal surrogacy trafficking attempt to Georgia. https://immigration.gov.ph/bi-stops-another-illegal-surrogacy-trafficking-attempt-to-georgia/
[vii][vii][vii] Bureau of Immigration (Philippines). (2024, December 9). BI stops another illegal surrogacy trafficking attempt to Georgia. https://immigration.gov.ph/bi-stops-another-illegal-surrogacy-trafficking-attempt-to-georgia/
[viii] Guichard, T. (2024, September 7).Surrogacy: in Georgia, a booming business.The Cross.https://www.la-croix.com/international/gpa-en-georgie-un-business-en-plein-essor-20240907
[ix] The Globalized Domestic Work Industry in the Philippines: The Economics of Otherness in the Migration Industry. ENS Editions. (n.d.). https://books.openedition.org/enseditions/46068?lang=fr
[x] Directorate-General of the Treasury (France). (2018, March 21). Remittances from Filipino migrants in 2017. https://www.tresor.economie.gouv.fr/Articles/2018/03/21/les-transferts-des-migrants-philippins-en-2017
[xi] CCFD-Terre Solidaire. (n.d.). 60 per cent of Filipino migrant workers are women employed in domestic work. https://ccfd-terresolidaire.org/60-des-travailleurs-emigres-philippins-sont-des-femmes-employees-a-des-taches-domestiques/
[xii] IGG-GEO. (2023, December 13).Domestic workers (Philippines): the invisible workforce of globalization.https://igg-geo.org/2023/12/13/les-travailleuses-domestiques-philippines-la-main-doeuvre-invisible-fruit-de-la-mondialisation/
[xiii] Directorate-General of the Treasury (France). (2018, March 21). Remittances from Filipino migrants in 2017. https://www.tresor.economie.gouv.fr/Articles/2018/03/21/les-transferts-des-migrants-philippins-en-2017
[xiv] Al Jazeera English / 101 East. (2024, November 14). Inside the Philippines’ underground surrogacy industry https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEocVVzjz8k&t=556s
[xv] Philippine News Agency. (n.d.). https://www.pna.gov.ph/articles/1235325
[xvi] House of Representatives (Philippines). (2024). H.R. No. 2055 [ https://docs.congress.hrep.online/legisdocs/basic_19/HR02055.pdf
[xvii] Tan, F. Jr. (n.d.). Surrogacy in the Philippine Context: Bane or Boon? https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Fernando-Jr-Tan/publication/373679792_Surrogacy_in_the_Philippine_Context_Bane_or_Boon/links/64f73b0487d7f830e8016d50/Surrogacy-in-the-Philippine-Context-Bane-or-Boon.pdf
For further information
Murdoch, L. (2017, January 4). Philippine police arrest surrogate mothers-to-be in human trafficking crackdown. The Sydney Morning Herald.
https://www.smh.com.au/world/philippine-police-arrest-surrogate-motherstobe-in-human-trafficking-crackdown-20170104-gtli45.html
Daily Tribune Philippines. (2024, December 7). Illegal surrogates intercepted at NAIA. PressReader.
https://www.pressreader.com/philippines/daily-tribune-philippines/20241207/281638195782078
Rappler. (n.d.). How Philippine clinics illegally facilitate surrogacy.
https://www.rappler.com/newsbreak/investigative/how-philippine-clinics-illegally-facilitate-surrogacy/
Al Jazeera English / 101 East. (2019). The baby factory: A 13-year-old surrogate mother in the Philippines
. YouTube.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ipzwxXjAcA
Al Jazeera English / 101 East. (2023, November). Abandoned babies, false birth certificates: surrogacy in the Philippines
. YouTube.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEocVVzjz8k&t=59s
ABS-CBN News. (2024, December 4). 13 pregnant Filipinas jailed in Cambodia in good condition – envoy.
https://www.abs-cbn.com/news/2024/12/4/13-pregnant-philipinas-jailed-in-cambodia-in-good-condition-envoy-1008
Philippine Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology. (2024). Gestational surrogacy. Philippine Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, 48(1).
https://journals.lww.com/pjog/fulltext/2024/01000/gestational_surrogacy.6.aspx
SunStar Manila. (2024, November 2). BI raises concern over surrogacy-related human trafficking.
https://www.sunstar.com.ph/manila/bi-raises-concern-over-surrogacy-related-human-trafficking
ABS-CBN News. (2024, December 11). Immigration stops 2 Pinays allegedly recruited as surrogates in Georgia.
https://www.abs-cbn.com/news/nation/2024/12/11/immigration-stops-2-pinays-allegedly-recruited-as-surrogates-in-georgia-1300
Khmer Times. (2025, May). Cambodia to sign MoU with the Philippines on human trafficking.
https://www.khmertimeskh.com/501679402/cambodia-to-sign-mou-with-the-philippines-on-human-trafficking/
France Culture. (2020, October 19). Philippines: the factory of the domestic model [podcast Cultures Monde].https://www.radiofrance.fr/franceculture/podcasts/cultures-monde/philippines-la-fabrique-de-la-domestique-modele-8488204