The surrogacy scandals are just beginning

The celebrity world has carried out a remarkably effective public relations campaign for surrogacy. The formula is now grimly familiar. A famous person announces the new arrival. The headlines speak of a “miracle’, a “beautiful journey” and an extraordinarily generous but anonymous woman, a “surrogate”. Concern around money, power, contracts and the status of the woman who actually undergoes the pregnancy and birth are conspicuous by their omission. Fans celebrate this new life and shower the famous person with congratulations with no questions asked.

As a result, surrogacy begins to look normal — a simple alternative “pathway to parenthood”. Whether it’s Lady Gaga or Lena Dunham, the names change but the underlying message does not. Why actually have a baby when you can buy one? 

But has celebrity baby-buying finally gone too far? The cracks began to show last year with the backlash in response to the announcement of Baby Tove to Lily Collins and Charlie McDowell, with McDowell issuing a statement: “It’s OK to not know the motivations of a surrogate regardless of what you assume and it’s OK to spend less time spewing hateful words into the world, especially in regards to a beautiful baby girl who has brought a lot of love into people’s lives,” he said. Their earlier joint statement expressed gratitude to Tove’s mother but did not share how much they paid her.

This year, Meghan Trainor also received a flurry of criticism when she was pictured doing Skin to Skin with a newborn she did not give birth to, based on this cosplay and some fair assumptions of how her slim figure would have been affected by a third pregnancy. The main point appeared to be that Trainor had benefitted from her body positive image but had outsourced pregnancy. “Trainor has spent a decade lecturing her audience about bodies, self-acceptance and the evils of vanity…Trainor is now read as someone who says whatever flatters her current circumstances” wrote Kara Kennedy in The Telegraph. 

The singer’s statement referenced her autoimmune disease, and that “every family’s journey looks different, and all of them are extremely valid”. Trainor said: “We cried a lot, but it was the best thing for our family.” Yet I’m certain that being taken from her mother at birth was not the “best thing” for Baby Mickey Moon.

Whether individual celebrities have compelling personal circumstances is irrelevant. The more fundamental question is whether pregnancy should be reconceptualised as a service that one adult can commission from another, with the resulting child transferred to those who flashed their Platinum Amex card.

The United States has developed one of the world’s most commercially sophisticated surrogacy industries in the world — operating internationally to supply babies to anyone who wants one and can pay for him or her (or them, twins are a popular choice). There are hundreds of agencies and clinics and “regulation” varies considerably between states. It’s celebrity culture that has helped give the baby trade an attractive, glossy image. 

Yet this thin veneer is creaking under the weight of questions. Will seeing the rich buy from the poor ultimately be the downfall of surrogacy?

A proud Instagram post, a glossy magazine spread or a well-managed PR statement brings surrogacy into the spotlight but also under the microscope. Conversations around ethics, regulation, risk and regressive attitudes have highlighted again how out of step the American model is. I have noticed especially strong criticism, online, from accounts in Spain and France where surrogacy is banned. This social commentary highlighted the insular, even egotistical approach of America.

But other factors are changing the conversation about surrogacy. Legal challenges are playing a role as well. Look at McKenna West, an Alaskan nurse who was a “surrogate” for California couple Nausheen Gilkar and Omar Ahmed when the baby was diagnosed with hypoplastic left heart syndrome, a serious congenital heart condition. Reportedly, Gilkar and Ahmed asked West to terminate the pregnancy as the contract contained a provision for terminating if a foetal abnormality was found. A number of questions suddenly collided. What body autonomy does a woman have if she has signed a surrogacy contract? What constitutes a “defect”? Can a surrogate mother be forced to undergo an abortion when she refuses, even if she has previously agreed? What is consent if you can’t change your mind? 

West refused, travelled to Texas and gave birth in August. The courts sided with the commissioning parents and the Supreme Court declined to intervene, effectively ending the legal recourse West can access to seek contact with the baby boy she gave birth to. That case may be over. But the questions it exposed have been left unanswered. 

Then there is Kyla Simpson who gave birth in Florida in November 2024 to triplet boys for a single man in China. When he failed to arrive to collect them, claiming visa issues, Kyla took up her rightful place as mother. She took the boys home, breastfed them and raised them. When one of the triplets, Christopher, died after becoming ill with a respiratory virus, she arranged his funeral and grieved the loss of her son. When the kids were nearly two years old, an emergency child-pickup order removed Samuel and Daniel from Kyla’s care — but she has not simply disappeared because a contract says she is not the mother. She is now fighting for custody.

And then there is the extraordinary case of Mark Surrogacy, an agency in California. An investigation by The New Yorker documents how Guojun Xuan and Silvia Zhang built an agency in order to arrange multiple pregnancies to have “a large family”. The FBI investigation found evidence of the mistreatment of very young children living in their Arcadia home, including physical abuse and neglect. The couple were arrested in 2025 and released on bond. During this time another six children were born in Pennsylvania, Virginia and Georgia bringing the total to 21 children. The case is ongoing.

These are just three scandals exposed in the last 18 months, and, as this the smoke clears, revulsion towards the practice grows. 

Celebrity examples matter because they illustrate the asymmetry between those commissioning surrogacy and those providing the “service” of pregnancy. But the real challenge to surrogacy comes from “ordinary” women whose names we have never heard of, whose cases force us to look beyond and confront what the system not only allows but encourages. Celebrity culture can make surrogacy more visible but it is the mothers who end up in court who may make it impossible to ignore.