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<\/p>\nSome Texans say the practice of foreign nationals using Texas surrogates raises issues with birthright citizenship and national security.<\/p>\n
AUSTIN, Texas \u2014 A Texas Senate Committee held a hearing at the Texas Capitol on Wednesday to look into the practice of allowing people in Texas to serve as surrogates for families in other countries.<\/p>\n
Some Republican state lawmakers have discussed banning foreign nationals from contracting with Texas surrogates to have children. Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick has directed State Senators on the Senate Committee on Health and Human Services to examine the practice ahead of next year’s legislative session.<\/p>\n
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Surrogacy is when a woman carries and delivers a child for another person. It typically involves a medical procedure where an embryo is transferred to the surrogate via in vitro fertilization (IVF). Most of the time, the surrogate and the child are not related. It is commonly used by families who struggle with fertility issues, as well as members of the LGBTQ+ community. In some cases, it is their only option to grow their family.<\/p>\n
But some say foreign nationals are exploiting it because children born under these circumstances obtain U.S. citizenship.<\/p>\n
For instance, the Wall Street Journal<\/a> has reported on a Chinese billionaire who has had dozens of children through this procedure.<\/p>\n Audrey O\u2019Neill, the Commissioner of the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, said they received a small number of reports of surrogate exploitation, and they are pretty rare. O\u2019Neill said they have received three reports of abuse and neglect, two in May 2025 and one in November 2025. All three involved surrogacy and centered on concerns with the intended parents. In two of the three cases, the intended parents were foreign nationals who reside outside the U.S. In the third, the intended parent was an American citizen and non-Texas resident with a history of child abuse.\u00a0<\/p>\n In some cases, you can even pick and choose where you want the sperm or egg to come from.<\/p>\n \u201cYou can say I want a Danish sperm and they will freeze sperm from Denmark, because you love how Danish men look, and you can say, I want an egg donor from Columbia because I want an Ivy League egg donor,\u201d Jennifer Lahl, a founder and board member for The Center for Bioethics and Culture Network, said. \u201cYou’ve got this like Legos. I want this, and I want that, and I’m going to build this kind of baby.\u201d<\/p>\n The sale or purchase of a child is illegal under state law, but State Sen. Lois Kolkhorst (R-Brenham) said testimony she heard Wednesday was dangerously close to, or even over, the line of purchasing children.<\/p>\n \u201cI always looked at surrogacy as a person who couldn’t have a child, and maybe, before they had to go through cancer treatment, the young female might have frozen her eggs,\u201d Kolkhorst said. \u201cI never dreamed that we were just like building a Lego. I want an egg from this ethnicity because I like this, and I want a sperm from this ethnicity, and we’re going to merge it, and we’re going to go rent a womb.\u201d<\/p>\n However, surrogacy agencies and advocates argue that arrangements involving foreign nationals only make up a small portion of surrogacy cases.\u00a0<\/p>\n They also warn that the proposal could open the door to broader restrictions on surrogacy and IVF in Texas.<\/p>\n State Senator C\u00e9sar Blanco (D-El Paso) questioned Lahl on whether this will make it harder for those who are down to \u201ctheir last opportunity to grow their family.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI don’t think anybody can risk a woman’s life because of something they need or want. We don’t need children. We want children, and that’s a good thing. It’s a normal, natural desire,\u201d Lahl said. \u201cSurrogacy is risky to women’s health. So, I’m not comfortable saying because this couple’s nice and they pass the background checks and they’re financially stable and they’re not breaking any laws and then therefore risk another woman’s life. That makes me very uncomfortable as a nurse and as a bioethicist.\u201d<\/p>\n Blanco asked about his district, which borders Mexico. Many people in that part of the state have relationships on both sides of the border and hold U.S. and Mexican citizenship.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe’ve got mixed nationalities or mixed immigration status, and some of those families might need to utilize surrogacy if they want to grow their families. A ban on allowing international surrogacy would directly harm them,\u201d Blanco asked. \u201cDo you all consider those kinds of families in making your recommendations? Do you all consider those types of families that are mixed status?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI always say, I don’t care if you’re gay or straight or single or mixed or whatever,\u201d Lahl said. \u201cMy point is, you don’t risk another woman’s health because you want to grow your family.\u201d<\/p>\n There has been a sharp increase in surrogacy over the past 10 years in Texas, from 244 in 2016 to 657 in 2025. They make up between 0.10% and 0.17% of the roughly 400,000 births reported in Texas each year for registration.<\/p>\n David Korstroun, the Chief of Regulatory Services Officer for the Texas Health and Human Services Commission, said these agencies are not required to be licensed and are therefore not regulated by the state.<\/p>\n \u201cThey’re like small businesses. Lawyers have to follow the bar association laws for contracts. Fertility doctors have to follow whatever the guidance is for medical practice within the state,\u201d Lahl said. \u201cThe agencies literally are like a mom-and-pop shop where you just register an LLC or a small business, and you have a name, and you hang out a shingle, and you just start matching people.\u201d<\/p>\n The state does not collect data on whether the egg and sperm are from intended parents or from someone else, so it is hard to tell exactly how many of these procedures occur. The only way the hospital would know is if the details are in the Gestational Agreement, which surrogate births in Texas require and need to be validated by a court. However, they don\u2019t always contain that information, and the hospital may only get the validation from the court.<\/p>\n Currently, there is nothing in state or federal law that would prohibit foreign couples from seeking out American surrogates.<\/p>\n Some Texans believe this raises issues with birthright citizenship and national security.<\/p>\n The U.S. Supreme Court ruled last week that\u00a0birthright citizenship remains protected<\/a> under the Constitution, rejecting President Donald Trump’s effort to end the long-standing right through executive action.<\/p>\n The decision preserves the guarantee that nearly everyone born on U.S. soil is automatically a citizen under the 14th Amendment.<\/p>\n \u201cWe’re really meddling in stuff here,\u201d State Sen. Charles Perry (R-Lubbock) said. \u201cThere’s a part of me that, we have a foster care system and an adoption network for parents who truly can’t physically conceive. It is not the old traditional surrogate. Maybe we don’t want to encourage birthright citizenship and tourism and create a network of American citizens that we don’t even know.\u201d<\/p>\n Most of Europe and Asia prohibit commercial surrogacy, which is why foreign nationals travel to the U.S. or use a surrogate in the U.S. Lahl said over 40% of surrogate pregnancies in California are for foreigners.<\/p>\n International prohibitions on surrogacy have created a multibillion-dollar global marketplace that targets financially vulnerable young women. The intended parents pay hundreds of thousands of dollars.<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019ll take a low-income woman or a military wife, because they don’t care if she’s smart and pretty,\u201d Lahl said. \u201cThey mostly care that she needs money.\u201d<\/p>\n Christian Ross was paid about $40,000 to carry a baby to term and got an additional $2,500 for having a C-section. The complications from surrogacy have left her unable to have any more children.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was monthly payments that helped me pay my bills. At the time, I was raising three children, one with type one diabetes and autism, and it was a way for me to help people and a way for me to be at home with my children,\u201d Ross said. \u201cHowever, that wasn’t the case. Everything I got from the money I gave away. I bought a new car for myself and gave it away after I found out what had happened. It seems like dirty money, and I wanted nothing to do with it.\u201d<\/p>\n Kolkhorst pointed out that there is a billboard currently on I-35 in Texas encouraging women to become surrogates and earn $74,000.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIf I’m driving down the road and I see $74,000 and I really need some money, I would, as a young woman, maybe consider that,\u201d Kolkhorst said.<\/p>\n The company behind the billboard, Kolkhorst said, includes a UK coordinator and a foreign relations liaison who speaks Chinese.<\/p>\n Recently, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and Slovakia changed their constitutions to close a loophole for travel. You can\u2019t do surrogacy in Italy or Slovakia, and now they’ve changed the law so you cannot leave and come to the United States to have a surrogate baby and bring that baby back.<\/p>\n Asked whether intended parents are looking to build their family because they can\u2019t do so in their home country, or are seeking citizenship for the child, experts said it depends on the country they are coming from. Those from European countries like the Netherlands tend to be in it for building families, while those from China and Asian countries tend to want citizenship.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cPeople will say we’re not buying a child, we’re not selling a child, but you read that\u00a0contract,\u00a0the compliance is tied to delivering and giving, handing over, relinquishing a child, and if you don’t do that, then you are in breach of your contract,\u201d Lahl said. \u201cI don’t understand how anybody could read that and with a straight face and say money has no bearing on this.\u201d<\/p>\n Lahl testified Wednesday that surrogacy pregnancies are often medically high risk for gestational hypertension, pre-eclampsia, placenta previa, C-sections, and long-term health consequences from the hormones from IVF drugs. Surrogate mothers are also more likely, Lahl said, to have postpartum depression and be diagnosed with mental illness. Babies can also have long-term health consequences due to higher rates of prematurity and low birth weights.\u00a0<\/p>\n Texas cleared the way for surrogacy in 2003, when state lawmakers passed a bill that allows the intended parents to be recognized as the child\u2019s legal parents before birth, though the Legislature has not done much on the topic since then.<\/p>\n Perry said he believes state lawmakers do need to look at cleaning up the regulations around this in 2027.<\/p>\n \u201cThe bottom line is it’s about the kids’ benefit and the welfare, and so I don’t know how you could argue that it’s good for a kid to be part of a transaction that is associated with a sale subsequent to that or through foster care,\u201d Perry said. \u201cThe IP parents have to have a biological connection. Preferably, 50% of the couple has to have some. If they don’t and truly don’t and they are searching, we point them to a foster care system.\u201d<\/p>\n The Texas GOP platform, which the party adopted at its convention last month, includes both a ban on commercial surrogacy for foreign nationals and a ban on public funding for IVF because they believe IVF is a \u201cdestructive practice\u201d for embryos. IVF, experts say, is a critical part of the surrogacy process.\u00a0<\/p>\n Some hope banning foreign nationals from contracting with Texas surrogates to have children is the first step to ultimately regulating the surrogacy industry.<\/p>\n \u201cPregnancy is not a service. It’s not a job. A woman’s womb is not a rental property, and a child is not a product to be bought and sold,\u201d Lahl said. \u201cTexas can and should lead by rejecting this form of 21st-century exploitation and protect the dignity of women and children.\u201d<\/p>\n Earlier this year, Florida passed a law banning surrogacy and adoption with citizens from certain countries designated as ones of concern, like China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela and Syria. There is also similar legislation working through Congress, the Stopping Adversarial Foreign Exploitation of Kids in Domestic Surrogacy Act, or SAFE Kids Act.<\/p>\n During the hearing, state lawmakers brought up the investigation<\/a> that Texas Governor Greg Abbott ordered on Tuesday into a South Texas hospital because of allegations it profited from so-called birth tourism.<\/p>\n