Policy — Surrogacy

Policy — Surrogacy

The Women’s Rights Party opposes commercial surrogacy arrangements due to the potential for exploitation of women, and we agree this should remain illegal in New Zealand. Even in New Zealand where commercial surrogacy is against the law, we have a situation where those with means can essentially ‘buy’ a baby to be carried and birthed by women who have become a commodity in a profit-driven transaction.

We oppose any proposed changes to legislation which would remove the birth mother as the first legal parent in the case of surrogacy.

We are concerned about the health and safety of modern reproductive practices used in surrogacy to both donors and recipients, such as egg harvesting and embryo transfers, and we question whether these practices create so much risk of harm to the surrogate mother that legally permitting them to continue cannot be justified.

Surrogacy arrangements, whether commercial or altruistic, can never be free of exploitation of women’s reproductive capacities. We do not agree that having a baby via surrogacy is a human right.

There is no societal duty to provide babies to those who cannot have their own children. In this context, we are concerned about single men or men in relationships with other men being able to commission a surrogacy arrangement.

We call for a ban on international surrogacy by New Zealand citizens seeking to ‘rent a womb’ in countries where there is commercial surrogacy, thereby seeking to circumvent New Zealand’s ban on commercial surrogacy.

The Women’s Rights Party has submitted on the Improving Surrogacy Arrangements Bill currently before Parliament.

In the joint Women’s Rights Party and WDI NZ input into the Thematic Report of the Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls to the General Assembly 80th Session on Surrogacy and Violence Against Women and Girls, we focused on the situation in New Zealand where the Government is currently considering a redrafted Bill to liberalise surrogacy.[1]

We covered the following:

The current process in New Zealand

The New Zealand process for international surrogacy, and our concerns

What the original Improving Arrangements for Surrogacy Bill proposed and why we opposed it

The redrafted Bill and our position on proposed changes

Summary and Conclusions

Our conclusions were as follows:

We do not agree that the proposed surrogacy arrangements can eliminate the coercive element inherent in the practice of surrogacy. Even in New Zealand where commercial surrogacy is against the law, we have a situation where those with means can essentially ‘buy’ a baby to be carried and birthed by women who have become a commodity in a profit-driven transaction.

We are concerned that modern reproductive technology practices used in surrogacy arrangements, such as egg harvesting and embryo transfers, create so much risk of harm to the surrogate mother that legally permitting them to continue cannot be justified.

It is our view that surrogacy arrangements, whether commercial or altruistic, can never be free of exploitation of women’s reproductive capacities.

We do not agree that having a baby via surrogacy is a human right. There is no societal duty to provide babies to those who cannot have their own children.

We have concerns about single men or men in relationships with other men where there is no mother involved being able to commission a surrogacy arrangement. In whose interests would this serve – the parents’ or the child’s?

We called for a ban on international surrogacy by New Zealand citizens seeking to ‘rent a womb’ in countries where there is commercial surrogacy, thereby seeking to circumvent New Zealand’s ban on commercial surrogacy.

[1] https://www.legislation.govt.nz/bill/member/2021/0072/latest/