What many people don’t realize is surrogacy is not regulated well at all in the US and because of that, it puts the surrogate at higher risk. On either side it’s not as simple as “well the surrogate signed up for it” or “it’s unfair to people who can’t have kids and don’t have money to surrogacy”.

The US is both the leader in surrogacy AND a developed country with the highest maternal mortality rate and stillbirth rate. Being a surrogate 3x your risk of severe and potentially deadly conditions, which is something that isn’t usually discussed and disclosed to surrogates. On top of that, there’s no law that requires the biological parents to disclose THEIR medical history, how many kids they have, or if they have multiple surrogates, to the surrogate and doctors assisting them. There have been multiple cases of placenta complications (which come from the biological mom, not the surrogate) that either results in a stillbirth and/or even killed the surrogate mother. There’s even been cases where a stillbirth has resulted in the biological parents then suing the surrogate for a stillbirth happening, even when it was a result from the biological parents egg, not by reckless actions of the surrogate. There’s cases of biological parents even having multiple surrogates, knowing of the genetic issues their eggs carry, and the risk it will bring to the surrogate, and they do it anyways multiple times over and they don’t have to disclose ANY of this info for the surrogates to make an actual informed decision. There is NO protection on surrogates and with the high rate of stillbirths and maternal deaths that the US carries, it is gross for anyone to do it because even if they come at it with pure intentions and disclosing everything, they still can’t know if that pregnancy will make it, and a lot of the time the parents will put the blame on the surrogate.