Who Will Safeguard Transnational Surrogates’ Interests? Lessons from the Israeli Case Study

Abstract

This article seeks to establish the extent to which the voices and interests of transnational commercial surrogates—women who are paid by intended parents from another country for carrying a pregnancy—are accounted for by those with power to shape the policy around this complex area in the country of the intended parents. Through a first-of-its-kind qualitative study of the viewpoints of policy makers and government officials, taking Israel as a case study, the research maps the hierarchy of interests in Israel as the country of the intended parents, in which the rights and well-being of the transnational surrogates are largely neglected. The study finds that, even when awareness of the vulnerability of transnational surrogates is relatively evolved among officials, they admit that the motivation and ability of the country of the intended parents to supervise the protection of the surrogates—during a process that takes place in another country—are extremely limited. Equipped with the empirical findings, the article examines the actual and potential regulative arenas relevant to transnational surrogacy (also known as international surrogacy), and offers an alternative normative framework to correct the current regulative failure in providing much-needed legal protection for transnational surrogates.