The Mexican parliament is currently discussing a ban on surrogacy on the grounds that Mexican politicians and media alike consider it a new form of human trafficking. Recent media reports have accused international surrogacy agencies of trafficking Mexican women into surrogacy and, given that the country has long been singled out as a hotspot for the many practices often termed trafficking, these new accusations have sparked fierce debate about the moral and legal status of surrogacy. Politicians and the media describe surrogate mothers as vulnerable and exploited women, who are duped into surrogacy arrangements with the promise of making a fortune in nine months.
However, associating surrogacy with human trafficking and highlighting its exploitative potential serves as a fig leaf to ban surrogacy. It is an easy way out of a complicated issue that does not require seriously engaging with the structural problems that ‘force’ women to sell their reproductive labour. Indeed, to ban surrogacy could easily be doing these women a disservice. As long as contracts are in place and the living conditions of the surrogates are acceptable, their labour in the surrogacy industry is often more secure and stable than the other forms of labour available to them.
Travelling surrogacy markets
The rise of the Mexican surrogacy market is a consequence of a rapidly changing legal landscape for the surrogacy industry, which has seen India, Nepal, and Thailand all legislate or ban the business in recent years. Just after India started to regulate its multi-million dollar surrogacy business in 2012, surrogacy agencies and in vitro fertilisation (IVF) clinics moved house and set up in Thailand and Nepal to offer their services to an (often gay) international clientele. When the Thai government banned surrogacy in summer 2014, after the case of Baby Gammy become public, Mexico started to witness rapidly increasing demand for surrogates in its territory.
