This weekend, two stories revealed some troubling aspects of the surrogacy industry: one from the shiny, expensive high-end American market, and one from the grimy, Second World budget end of the spectrum.
The Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday that Chinese billionaires are using international surrogacy, especially in the United States, to purchase enormous families. Some seek to procure tens, perhaps even hundreds, of genetic children via surrogacy. The practice is banned in China, but the laws governing surrogacy overseas are sufficiently ambiguous for a large market to have opened up for those wealthy enough to go abroad — including in the US, where commercial surrogacy is legal and big business.
