Surrogacy can be exploitative, but it isn’t by default and doesn’t have to be. With proper protections for all parties and consent, it becomes a meaningful shared experience for the seeking parents and the surrogate.

**TL;DR If protected by the law, surrogacy is not exploitative. However, there are some countries / situations where it can become so**. For many countries, surrogacy is not exploitative. There are laws protecting the surrogate and the child she is carrying. Contracts are made. It is a protected process and so is beneficial for helping parents who are struggling with issues such as infertility. For example, in the UK , the surrogate is protected as they are the child's legal parent at birth and a parental order or adoption is needed to [transfer legal parental power.](https://www.gov.uk/legal-rights-when-using-surrogates-and-donors) You can also not pay a surrogate in the UK, except for their reasonable expenses. This diminishes uncomfortable boundaries of people seen as selling babies. With such measures in place, surrogacy can be great and not exploitative if both parties are treated fairly and respectfully. However, on an international scale. there have been many cases where it has become exploitative. It is a practise that is shaped by [history, culture and social values.](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-47826356) There have been a concern about some nations, such as Kenya and Nigeria where many international surrogacy destinations remain unregulated. This has led surrogacy to become a popular form of 'health tourism.' This is highly problematic as people can travel to countries with no regulations of surrogacy and exploit their citizens. At its core, I do not think surrogacy is exploitative. I think it is a beneficial process for both sides of the party, but that is **only** the case when it is regulated and protected by the law. I appreciate that around the world, there are places that do not regulate it and therefore allow many of their vulnerable citizens to be exploited. Nations need to include more protection within their laws regarding surrogacy to try and prevent exploitation as much as possible.

**TL; DR: Surrogacy is exploitative of human life as it is reduced from being precious to being a product through commodification. Surrogacy is also exploitative for mothers, both mentally due to the pain of giving up a child, and physically as their bodies are being merely used as [‘baby factories’](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/feb/25/surrogacy-sweden-ban). Finally, it is exploitative of poorer nations who turn to surrogacy out of desperation.** Surrogacy is exploitative of human life as [‘babies are tailor-made to fit the desire of the world’s rich’](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/feb/25/surrogacy-sweden-ban) as they may choose their preferred features such as race, eye colour, hair colour etc. This causes a commodification of human life as the commercial surrogacy process can be equated to ordering a product with a click and collect (or even delivery) service available. This focus on genetics instead of emotions serves to ignore the gestational element of motherhood. Furthermore, the practice is exploitative of the birth mother as she signs [‘away her rights to a baby she has not even seen nor got know yet’](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/feb/25/surrogacy-sweden-ban). The maternal attachment that develops over the nine months of pregnancy cannot be broken nor denied by any external party. Despite copious amounts of mental preparation and warning, a surrogate mother is not likely to understand the trauma of giving up her child. The child’s birth mother is denied everything, even the right to be called ‘mum’. And so, surrogacy cannot be commodified like any normal market because the relationship between the worker (mother) and the product (baby) is an immensely special and genetic one. The fact that this ‘labour’ requires an alienation of something deeply integral to a person mean that it cannot be treated like a normal market of buying and selling because, as Debra Satz observes ‘the intrusion of the economic into the personal is seen as improper’. Finally, surrogacy is exploitative of poorer nations as they prioritise their need for money above their happiness and well-being, and therefore turn to the practice as a way of survival. In this way, surrogacy is similar to the issue of organ selling as desperation causes those in poverty to treat their bodies as marketable. For such reasons, Sweden has banned all surrogacy, commercial and altruistic, as it deems the practice exploitative. The attempt to justify the notion of ‘altruistic’ surrogacy has been denied. Firstly, in reality, it rarely happens as women are usually ‘paid under the table’. Moreover, even if a case was legitimately altruistic it remains to be problematic as it then seems to imply that exploitation only occurs if a woman is being paid. This completely misses the aforementioned mental and physical trauma experience by a surrogate mother. Not only does this practise hurt individuals but it reinforces and perpetuates systematic gender inequalities. With this in mind it makes sense that in February 2016, [‘feminist and human-rights activists from all over the world met in Paris to sign the charter against surrogacy, and the European Parliament has also called on states to ban it’](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/feb/25/surrogacy-sweden-ban). The Warnock Report on Human Fertility and Embryology states that ‘it is inconsistent with human dignity that a woman should use her uterus for financial profit’.