UN Expert Confirms It: Surrogacy Commodifies Children — The Age Still Frames the Debate Around Adults
Family First's Jane Foreman says The Age's latest feature on surrogacy (2 August) once again puts adults' desire for a baby at the centre of the debate, even as the United Nations' own Special Rapporteur brands the industry "a system of exploitation and commodification of women and children."
Ms Foreman says The Age's report told two stories: a loving Adelaide family built through an altruistic surrogacy arrangement, and the Family Court's 2025 ruling in the case of Lloyd and Compton, where a Queensland couple's commercial surrogacy arrangement — a criminal offence carrying up to three years' imprisonment — left their own baby with no legal mother at all, after the surrogate renounced her claim and the court found the couple had no standing to apply for parentage. Family First says both cases prove the same point: when adult wishes come first, the child's interests come last.
"Every surrogacy story in the media starts and ends with the adults who wanted a baby," said Mrs Foreman. "The Age gave us surrogates, lawyers and bio‑ethicists, but not once did it ask what it is like, from the child's side, to be intentionally separated from your birth mother the moment you're born."
Family First says the UN's own Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls, Reem Alsalem, has already answered the question The Age won't ask. Her landmark report — which found the global surrogacy market is projected to reach US$99.75 billion by 2033 — concluded surrogacy is "a system of exploitation and commodification of women and children." It found children born via surrogacy face immediate separation from their birth mother, a process the Special Rapporteur says "can be emotionally and developmentally significant," placing them at greater risk of insecure attachment and mental health disorders later in life. The UN has since called for the practice to be abolished worldwide.
"The UN is not some fringe pro‑life lobby group, it is the world's peak human rights body, and it has looked at the evidence and concluded surrogacy treats children as products to be manufactured to order," said Mrs Foreman. "Family First has been saying this for years. It's long past time Australia's politicians, and Australia's media, caught up."
The warning comes as the Australian Law Reform Commission prepares to hand down its review of surrogacy laws on 11 September, amid reports it will recommend paying Australian surrogates and making it easier to bring overseas surrogate births home. Family First says that would only industrialise the very commodification the UN has condemned, and is calling instead for surrogacy — commercial and altruistic alike — to remain off limits, consistent with Family First's policy platform (see familyfirstparty.org.au/pro_life_policy), with the resources redirected to making adoption a kind, supported and readily available option for children who need a loving home right now.
"If we truly put children first, we would be investing in kind, accessible adoption, not building a market that manufactures more children to order," said Mrs Foreman. "Every child deserves to know and be raised by their own mother and father wherever possible. That question should come before any adult's wish for a baby, not after it."
Family First is calling on all sides of politics to reject any weakening of Australia's surrogacy laws when the ALRC hands down its recommendations, and to put the rights of the child ahead of the wishes of adults. It's exactly why Victoria needs Family First in the Legislative Council after November — to be the one voice in Parliament asking what is best for the child, not just what adults want.
—
