Australia's Surrogacy Laws Are About to Change. The Question Is How.
The Australian Law Reform Commission hands its national review of surrogacy laws to the Attorney-General on the 29th of July. What it recommends will shape Australian law for generations, and there is only one recommendation consistent with its own terms of reference: prohibition.
On the 29th of July, the Australian Law Reform Commission will deliver its national review of surrogacy laws to the Commonwealth Attorney-General.[1] The Commission says its aims are to avoid the exploitation of women and to promote the best interests of the child. It should be held to precisely those aims, because if taken seriously, they permit only one conclusion. Not regulation of the trade, and not the current settlement of banning payment while permitting the practice, but prohibition.
The Pressure Is All in One Direction
Australia's birth rate has hit a record low, and the fertility industry has learned to use the empty cradle as a sales pitch. In New South Wales, a parliamentary inquiry into “fertility support” is now fielding submissions that demand wider access to assisted reproduction and surrogacy.[2] Groups such as Rainbow Families told the inquiry that reproductive technology should be available to everyone “regardless of sexuality or gender,” while others pressed to extend public rebates to “social infertility” and to expand surrogacy and donor conception.[2] This is not an isolated push. See another instance of LGBT lobbying at work.
This is no longer medicine. It is the manufacture of children to order, deliberately severed from a mother or a father before conception. One submission, from the Women's Bioethics Alliance, even called surrogacy a reproductive form of prostitution.[2] We should not be building a market that treats children like a product.
Why Australia's Current Law Isn't Enough
Some will say Australia has already drawn the right line. Commercial surrogacy is banned in every state and territory; only “altruistic” surrogacy is lawful. Keep the law as it is, they say, and the problem is solved. But that settlement misunderstands why surrogacy is immoral. An unpaid surrogacy arrangement still contracts a woman to carry a child in order to hand that child away. The newborn is still separated at birth from the only mother he or she has ever known. Would the child's loss be any smaller because no money changed hands? The problem was never the payment. The problem is treating motherhood as something a contract can transfer.
In October 2025, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls, Reem Alsalem, presented a report to the UN General Assembly describing surrogacy as a system of exploitation, violence and abuse of women and children, commercial and “altruistic” alike, and urged states to adopt a binding international instrument prohibiting all forms of it.[3] Her conclusion could not be plainer: surrogacy “as a practice, as an industry, must be abolished.”[3]
The Rest of the World Is Already Moving This Way
In 2024, Italy declared surrogacy a “universal crime”. Italian citizens can now be prosecuted for resorting to it even abroad, in countries where it is legal.[4] The Casablanca Declaration, a coalition of more than 150 experts and associations from across political and cultural backgrounds, is campaigning for its universal abolition, and this year, a group of states signed a declaration calling for an international moratorium.[5]
The face of that movement is Olivia Maurel, the Casablanca Declaration's spokeswoman, who was herself born through commercial surrogacy in the United States.[6] She has spoken openly about the abandonment trauma and identity struggles that followed, and calls surrogacy “the slavery of our century.”[6] Maurel is no religious conservative. She is a self-described feminist and atheist, and she wrote to Pope Francis to ask him to condemn the practice.[6] When the people actually born from surrogacy are asking the world to stop it, and the UN's own expert on violence against women agrees with them, who exactly is “more access” for?
Also read: The Tax Office Punishes Stay-at-Home Mothers
What the Commission Must Be Held To
Every surrogacy arrangement, paid or unpaid, is a contract for the surrender of a child. No regulatory scheme can fix that, because the harm is not a defect in the paperwork. It is the purpose of the process. A child has a right to their own mother and father. A nation worried about its empty cradles should be helping families form, not licensing a market to fill the gap with children made to order.
What You Can Do
Family in Danger is calling on the Attorney-General to prohibit surrogacy in all its forms, commercial and “altruistic” alike, and to reject any recommendation that regulates, normalises or expands the practice. The report arrives on the 29th of July. The window to be heard is now. If you believe a child has a right to its own mother and father, add your name and sign our petition.
Click here to ban surrogacy in Australia
References:
1. Australian Law Reform Commission, Review of Surrogacy Laws, Terms of Reference: final report due to the Commonwealth Attorney-General by 29 July 2026 (alrc.gov.au).
2. NSW Legislative Council, Select Committee into Fertility Support and Assisted Reproductive Treatment, established 4 June 2025; submissions: Women's Bioethics Alliance (Submission 68); Rainbow Families Australia (Submission 62); available at parliament.nsw.gov.au.
3. Reem Alsalem, UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls, report to the UN General Assembly, presented 10 October 2025; OHCHR press release, “UN expert calls for recognition of surrogacy as system of violence, exploitation and abuse, urges abolition”, 10 October 2025.
4. Italy, Law no. 169 of 4 November 2024, amending art. 12(6) of Law no. 40/2004.
5. Declaration of Casablanca for the universal abolition of surrogacy, declaration-surrogacy-casablanca.org; ADF International, “Landmark Declaration Calls for International Moratorium on Surrogacy”, 2026.
6. Olivia Maurel, spokesperson, Casablanca Declaration (born through commercial surrogacy, US, 1991); Casablanca Declaration press releases 2024-2025; National Catholic Register / CNA interview, April 2024; author of Where Are You, Mom? (Éditions du Rocher).