Australian bishops call on government to enforce country’s surrogacy ban

CNA Newsroom, Jul 16, 2025 / 12:05 pm

The Australian Catholic Bishops Conference has urged the Australian Law Reform Commission to ban all forms of surrogacy, including “altruistic” arrangements, in a nine-page letter highlighting the “profound harms” of the practice. 

“The Australian Catholic Bishops Conference calls on the Law Reform Commission to recommend the prohibition of all forms of surrogacy in Australia,” the bishops write in the letter, which was shared with CNA. 

“A woman is not a machine for reproduction,” the bishops argue in the letter, “she is a person made in the image of God, called to bear life with love, freedom, and dignity.”

“Surrogacy reduces this sacred role [of motherhood] to a service contract—an arrangement that denies the women’s full humanity,” the letter says. “Surrogacy attempts to divide a woman's body from her identity, as though she could be a vessel without being a mother.” 

Submitted to the commission on July 9 by Sydney Auxiliary Bishop Tony Percy — the conference’s delegate for life issues — the letter asserts that current laws fail to protect women and children from exploitation and trauma, emphasizing that children "have no voice" in surrogacy arrangements and deserve to be "received in love, not produced as part of a contractual arrangement."

“While the pain of infertility is real and deserving of compassion, not all responses to suffering are just. Surrogacy introduces new and profound harms,” the bishops say in the letter, noting the practice places both women and children at heightened risk for medical and emotional trauma. 

“For children,” the letter continues, “it breaches core human rights, including identity, parentage, and protection from commodification, which are rights affirmed by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.” 

Commercial surrogacy, where surrogate mothers are paid to carry the child, is illegal in Australia. Only “altruistic” surrogacy, where the mother’s pregnancy expenses are covered but she makes no profit, is considered lawful. 

Because commercial surrogacy is illegal, Australian state and territory courts will generally not recognize those who engage in a commercial surrogacy arrangement as the legal parents of the child born through it. 

Some states, however, including New South Wales, have passed laws that allow the granting of legal parentage in certain circumstances after a commercial arrangement. The pathways, however, “often require admitting criminal conduct to the court,” according to the Review of Surrogacy Laws being considered by the law commission. 

“It is concerning that although commercial surrogacy is banned in Australia, including overseas arrangements in several jurisdictions, these laws are rarely enforced,” the bishops point out in their letter. 

“As a result, Australians are continuing to commission children through international commercial surrogacy with little scrutiny or consequence, undermining the intent of the legal prohibitions which are to protect children.”

The bishops’ letter includes testimony from former surrogate mothers who experienced “deep emotional, physical, and spiritual harm” when participating in the practice. 

One mother, identified as Cathy, stated: "The pain never goes away. I am still an emotional basket case and struggle every day with this… When I signed the paper, I thought I could do it. I did not realize it would break my heart. The pain and emptiness I feel have been unbearable.”

Another woman, called Sherrie, said: “I can’t describe the depth of sadness I felt when I came home without the child I loved, carried within me, and gave birth to. It was as if I had a child die.” 

She continued: “I just couldn’t help but love this child like my own, because it was my own… As I watched their car driving away that day on the gravel road, I felt like the dust left behind to scatter in the corn fields.” 

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Ultimately, the bishops in the letter express deep concern for the terms of the review conducted by the commission, which they say “appear[s] to prioritize easier access to surrogacy,” rather than promoting the “fundamental rights and dignity of women and children.” 

“We reject the idea that expanding surrogacy serves the best interests of children or respects human dignity,” they write. “Any legal reform must begin with a clear commitment to protect children from commodification, women from exploitation, and society from the normalization of contract-based human reproduction.”