Name: Why are some countries banning surrogacy? - The Global Story podcast, BBC World Service
Uploaded: 2025-04-02T13:47:58.000Z
Duration: 18 min 25 s
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Hello, I'm Lucy Hockings, from the BBC World Service, this is The Global Story.

Today, Italy brings in some of the most stringent surrogacy laws in the world.

Carrying a child for someone else could be seen as the ultimate selfless act.

It's also a booming global industry, generating billions of dollars every year.

Surrogacy is growing in popularity, but while demand is rising, more and more countries are taking steps to ban surrogacy completely.

Most recently, Italy, where the far-right government has passed a new law that makes surrogacy a universal crime, putting it on the same level as child abuse and human trafficking.

So, is surrogacy exploitative or empowering?

And how easy is it to balance the desire of gay or infertile couples who want to become parents, with the rights of the women who the children?

With me today is the BBC's Sophia Battisa, who is the BBC's gender and identity correspondent.

Sophia, before we get started, I think we need to acknowledge it's such a divisive issue globally, because it raises not just legal questions, but for a lot of people, they're ethical questions, as well at the very heart of the concept of surrogacy.

But I think some people maybe are not clear about the different types of surrogacy that exist at the moment.

Surrogacy is when a woman carries a baby for another couple.

And there are two types of surrogacy, traditional and gestational.

And the main difference is whether the surrogate, the woman carrying the baby, is biologically related to that baby.

If you look at gestational surrogacy, this is when the woman carrying the baby is not related.

The embryo is created using IVF, and this is done using eggs from a donor or from the woman that has commissioned the surrogacy, the future mother.

This embryo is then transferred into the surrogate's uterus.

And this is the most common type of surrogacy because it's easier legally, and it's also easier emotionally, in a way, for everybody involved.

The second, the other kind of surrogacy, traditional surrogacy, is when the surrogate provides her own eggs.

So she's genetically related to the baby and has to give up parental rights.

Italy has a far-right government now, and they've introduced this new law that expands the country's existing ban on surrogacy.

They do, and a universal crime is a crime that is so serious that it's prosecuted even when it's committed abroad.

This new ban would make surrogacy punishable in Italy.

This is the most far-reaching ban in the world, and there's no other country that does this.

And the punishment would be quite severe.

I mean, we're talking about up to two years in jail and a fine of up to one million euros.

You've got the deputy prime minister, Matteo Salvini, calling this a uterus for rent, women used as cash machines.

You've got some MPs saying that this is a crime worse than paedophilia.

It's the right-wing government asserting its conservative credentials.

Some people have said this law has been brought about and is really targeting LGBTQ plus families.

They see this as a wider attack on the LGBT community in Italy.

And I mean, it's worth pointing out that most people that use surrogacy are heterosexual.

We don't have the exact figures, they don't exist, but people have told me it's about 90%.

A heterosexual couple that goes abroad to have a baby through surrogacy and then comes back, they can hide it.

But two gay men, they can't hide because they need a third party to have children.

And even before the ban, it was very hard for gay couples to have children.

That is often the argument that is used, that someone doesn't necessarily have the right to have their own biological child, they can go and adopt.

In Italy, a country where the Catholic Church is still very influential, and so surrogacy for years was the only option for gay couples to have children.

And that's why they see this new ban as a personal attack against them.

And you managed to earn the trust of some gay couples in Italy to speak to them about their experiences and what they were going through.

Maurizio and Mauro and Claudio and Davide.

Can you tell us a little bit more about their stories and what they've been experiencing?

So Maurizio and Mauro are a gay couple from Milan.

They have twins, a boy and a girl, thanks to a surrogate from the US.

So they paid lots of money to get their babies.

When I interviewed them, because of the political climate in Italy, their babies had not been granted Italian citizenship, which means that they could have problems accessing nurseries, accessing the health care system, which is supposed to be free for Italians.

But they were really angry about the stigma around surrogacy.

Their kids are going to grow up in a country where their existence, the fact that they are born, is a universal crime.

And then Claudio and Davide, they're a much younger couple, and they had a very different experience because when I spoke to them, they had a baby on their way, and they were really scared.

It took me a long time to convince them to talk to me.

We ended up doing the interview anonymously because they were scared that somebody from the government would see the report on the BBC and target them.

They were learning Dutch, they were learning Maltese, and in their eyes they were being forced into exile, into political asylum, for wanting to become fathers.

So can we look now at some of the different laws around surrogacy and the different models that exist in different countries?

In terms of legal frameworks, they really vary around the world.

You've got countries that have a full ban on surrogacy, like China, like lots of European countries, Italy, of course, but also Germany, France, Spain.

You've got countries that have a partial ban on surrogacy, and examples of that are the UK and Canada.

So they allow surrogacy, but only if it's not for money.

So a woman would sort of put herself through this to help others.

There's a woman that feels like she wants to give back, she wants to give the gift of life.

You also have countries where there are no regulations whatsoever, like Kenya, Nigeria, the Philippines, and that can be complicated, because that's where we see examples of things that go wrong, exploitations, things not done by the book.

And then finally, you've got countries where surrogacy is fully legal, and the US is a really good example.

So that means a woman carrying a baby for another couple gets paid, and gets paid quite a lot of money, depending on the state.

So states that allow this are, for example, California, Illinois, and Washington DC.

Surrogacy has become a lifeline for many people who have been unable to have children of their own.

For some, it's their only opportunity to become parents.

But while the demand for surrogacy and the possibilities it provides to people to have their own families has grown, the opportunities are actually still scarce.

And this is largely because so few countries actually allow intended parents to pay women to carry their babies.

And Sophia, there have been huge problems as well when it comes to international surrogacy.

There's lots of issues that can happen, one of them being a disagreement between the surrogate and intended parents.

And those are the people who pay or commission the procedure.

And those disagreements, for example, could happen if there are complications during the pregnancy.

Do we terminate the pregnancy, or do we continue?

There's also stories of women who suffer, who have a miscarriage, and then they are completely abandoned.

So they feel discarded, or sometimes they don't get paid at all because they weren't able to deliver a baby.

And then there's also accusations of babies being abandoned.

There was this case that became quite well known a few years ago in Thailand, where a surrogate gave birth to twins, a boy and a girl.

The girl was healthy, the boy had Down syndrome.

And she said that the couple who had commissioned the surrogacy from Australia, they took the girl back home, but they abandoned the baby.

So obviously, that's really difficult legally, emotionally.

And also, there can be significant health risks.

So there's this new study that looked at data from women in Canada, showing that a pregnancy through surrogacy can have higher risks, including severe bleeding after giving birth, or the risk of babies being born prematurely.

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Why are some countries banning surrogacy? - The Global Story podcast, BBC World Service

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