A friend of mine was conceived out of wedlock and has never known who her father is. She avoids dating anyone from her ethnic background, to avoid the slightest possibility that she might end up married to a half-brother.
With the worldwide legalisation of IVF and relaxation of prohibitions on surrogacy, the chances of unknowingly meeting and marrying one's siblings (or even biological or surrogate parents) have risen exponentially. A Connecticut woman slept with her high-school boyfriend, and later discovered that he was her half-sibling.
Further, doctors in Australia have mistakenly implanted the wrong embryo into expectant mothers' wombs, with two Monash IVF cases in Brisbane and Melbourne hitting the headlines last year.
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Yet legislators are proceeding full steam ahead, expanding access to surrogacy. Western Australian politicians have passed the Assisted Reproductive Technology and Surrogacy Act 2025, loosening restrictions that used to safeguard potential surrogate mothers.
Last July, the American Center for Bioethics and Culture Network (CBC) submitted a response to the national consultation on surrogacy reform through the Australian Law Reform Commission (ALRC) inquiry, warning that "weakening safeguards would expose women and children to ethical, social, and human-rights harms".
The CBC points out that the "new legislation makes several dramatic shifts:
The CBC adds:
"We should not underestimate the possible ripple effects: psychological trauma for birth-mothers who regret surrendering their child; identity and heritage issues for children born through surrogacy in loosely regulated systems; inequality and coercion risks for socio-economically vulnerable women; and the social and ethical consequences of transforming reproduction into a marketplace.
"This bill removes critical protections. It opens doors without adequate guardrails. And it treats human life and motherhood as a transaction."
The Australian Government has a website, www.surrogacy.gov.au, that states:
"Australian states and territories allow altruistic surrogacy but prohibit commercial surrogacy.
"State and territory laws protect the human rights of surrogates, babies born of surrogacy and intended parents. The laws do this by regulating altruistic surrogacy and making commercial surrogacy illegal to protect people from the risk of exploitation.
"Australians can be fined or even jailed if they engage in commercial surrogacy and some forms of advertising about surrogacy."
As for international options: "The surrogacy laws in New South Wales, Queensland and the Australian Capital Territory make it a criminal offence for their residents to travel overseas and engage in commercial surrogacy. Penalties include fines or imprisonment."
Even with the prohibitions against commercial surrogacy, one can imagine an idealistic, naive young woman being persuaded to bear a child for someone else as an "altruistic" act, not comprehending the sacred intimacy of the gestation process or how it feels for the baby to be ripped away at birth from the only person and only home they have ever known since conception.
Babies in utero are aware of their mother's scent and voice. The smell of their mother reduces their pain during the customary heel prick test. Attachment to one's mother provides security throughout life, enabling the development of healthy relationships.
Human beings are not interchangeable commodities to be summarily given away to fulfil adults' desires for a child.
We are inherently linked to our biological and/or birth parents for life; their genetics form our identities and medical histories.
Yet a victim mentality and sense of entitlement continue to drive those who seek surrogacy. In 2023, the ABC ran an article framing the restrictions at that time as "discrimination against gay couples and single men under the law". It quoted family lawyer Marty Kavanaugh as claiming "the number of young gay men who wanted access to surrogacy was in the thousands".
Kavanaugh added: "It can cost a minimum of $50,000, up to $250,000 for a couple to go overseas, and engage in surrogacy, which is an astronomical (amount)."
The ABC noted: "Between 2008 and 2022, just 24 children were legally born via surrogacy arrangements in WA, and as many as 624 were born overseas."
West Australian Liberal MP Nick Goiran spoke up against attempted legislative change in 2019, saying: "The question that members of the Parliament need to ask themselves is, 'Is it in the best interests of children to purposefully from day one ensure that the person doesn't have a mother?'"
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Mary Szoch, director of the Center for Human Dignity at the Family Research Council, wrote when US President Donald Trump signed an executive order to increase IVF access:
"Certainly, IVF has brought the hope of bearing a child to fruition for a small percentage (23 per cent) of couples who utilise the process. All of us should acknowledge that the millions of children born as a result of IVF are a blessing to their families and to our world.
"At the same time, however, we must recognise that millions more lives have been lost through this proxADcess that treats children as a commodity, not a gift - with estimates suggesting that more than 97 per cent of embryonic children are discarded, miscarried, frozen indefinitely, or donated for use by others or experimentation.
"The IVF industry engages in eugenic pre-screening of embryonic children for sex, genetic conditions, or traits such as eye colour. It encourages surrogacy and anonymous parenting. It puts the mother's physical health at risk while doing nothing to treat the cause of infertility, and it relies on the good faith of the completely unregulated IVF industry that charges $12,000-$25,000 per round of IVF (and has over 50 documented cases of intentional fraud and exploitation) to ensure that embryos are not wilfully mixed up, that the intended gametes are the ones used, and that the created embryos are treated with respect. Time and time again, the IVF industry has failed to meet these basic standards.
"Once explored beyond the promise of a beautiful baby, it's clear that IVF offers a perverse hope - one that requires the denial of basic human dignity and the destruction of human life."
In the United States, it is illegal in only 15 states for a doctor to swap his own sperm in for the father's. South Dakota became the 15th state recently when it enacted a fertility fraud law, thus protecting children's biological identity.
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In March 2024, after the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos deserve the same protections as children, Mercator's Michael Cook noted "13 reasons why you should be deeply sceptical of the IVF industry".
Chief is each human being's "right to begin life as an act of love by a mother and a father", as expressed by the Italian gay fashion icons Dolce and Gabbana in the Italian magazine Panorama:
"No chemical offspring and rented uterus: life has a natural flow, there are things that should not be changed ... You are born to a mother and a father - or, at least, that's how it should be. I call them children of chemistry, synthetic children. Rented uterus, semen chosen from a catalogue."
Social egg freezing, for "fertility preservation" as women postpone childbearing while pursuing a career or taking their time to date, is often glamorised, portrayed as a way to "empower" women to "explore all options and never settle".
However, this may present false hope about actual future fertility success. Japan has one of the highest proportions of IVF babies in the world (5 per cent), and one of the lowest birthrates (1.37 children per women). Cook wrote:
"IVF may even contribute to decreasing the birthrate. Women who believe that IVF will solve possible infertility may put off having children until their late 30s, when it may be too late."
Furthermore, it is a terribly expenxADsive option. The general price range is US$10,000 (A$14,330) to US$15,000 per cycle, and storage fees can be up to US$900 a year.
Facebook and Apple offered their female employees US$20,000 of egg-freezing benefits, a rather dystopian scenario, with implicit pressure "to delay motherhood in order to demonstrate seriousness and dedication to the workplace", as noted by Karey A. Harwood (2015, Medicolegal and Bioethics).
IVF also comes with the risk of lethal ovarian hyperstimulation, as well as increased birth defects, possibly due to exposure to medicines that harm the foetus. Doctors do not even know what is in the culture media that embryos live in prior to implantation. Major medical supplies company CooperSurgical had a culture solution that killed embryos.
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The longing for a child can certainly be overwhelming for those who suffer infertility. But there are much healthier and more ethical options, such as NaProTechnology, which identifies and heals underlying health issues, or adoption, fostering, or mentoring.
So, rather than playing Frankenstein with nascent humans and Russian roulette with women's health, let us love and honour the humans already with us.