Controversy Grows Over US Surrogacy Practices
Left 33%
Center 0%
Right 67%
1 left · 0 center · 2 right
What happened
Guojun Xuan, 66, and Silvia Zhang, 39, were arrested in Arcadia, California, on suspicion of conspiracy to commit child abuse after authorities said they housed more than a dozen children born to surrogates—some accounts put the household over 20—in a multimillion-dollar mansion and allegedly beat them. Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman said the couple also ran Future Spring Surrogacy from the home, recruiting surrogates. Separately, McKenna West, a surrogate matched with a California couple, learned at 20 weeks that the fetus had hypoplastic left heart syndrome; the intended parents invoked a contract abortion clause and demanded she abort at 24 weeks, which she refused before traveling to Texas for the child’s care. Courts later ruled the genetic parents have legal custody, and Justice Elena Kagan denied West’s emergency U.S. Supreme Court request to halt a California order recognizing those parents. The United States has no federal commercial-surrogacy statute, and only New York requires a special license to operate a surrogacy agency.
Sourcing check · Fully on the record · 3 articles
1 of 1 article cites a named source for the story. It was on the record from the first report.
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- How it developed
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Omitted — what each side leaves out
Unpacked
The missing piece in left-leaning coverage is the contract penalty on McKenna West. Left-leaning coverage, including Vox, never reports that refusing an abortion exposed her to more than $100,000 in liability, or that the genetic parents then sued her for damages. That account stops at a refused abortion and a later custody battle. Without the penalty and the suit, a reader cannot see how a commercial agreement was used against the woman who carried the child.
Left-leaning coverage opens on how much easier it is to start a surrogacy agency than a nail salon. The Daily Wire opens on a demanded abortion at 24 weeks and on the child remaining alive because McKenna said no.
How often do American surrogacy contracts include an abortion-demand clause, and how often is that clause invoked?
Bottom line
A Vox reader never hears that McKenna West was on the hook for more than $100,000 if she refused to abort, so the industry-chaos framing never shows the contract that created the fight.
The receipts — 5 facts one side's coverage lacks
- McKenna West faced more than $100,000 in financial liability for refusing to abort
- Most of the time surrogacy arrangements go right, and academic papers find surrogates are usually happy with their experience
- Only New York requires a special license to operate a surrogacy agency
- Courts have ruled that the genetic parents have legal custody of the child McKenna West carried
- Commercial surrogacy is completely illegal inside China
The Left View
Vox treats the Arcadia arrest and related custody fights as the latest sign of an industry that is “largely unregulated” and “ripe for abuse or legal issues,” arguing it is easier in most states to open a surrogacy agency than a nail salon. Reporter Emi Nietfeld, speaking on Today, Explained, says the lack of federal rules is “both political and financial”: anti-abortion Republicans long resisted IVF-related oversight, while people on the left feared limits would let government decide “who can and cannot have a family.” She describes inexperienced “pop-up agencies,” cases involving Chinese intended parents and geopolitical anxiety, and disputes such as West’s and Florida surrogate Kyla Simpson’s as evidence of “chaos” when arrangements fail. Nietfeld also stresses that “most of the time things go right” and that academic work finds surrogates “usually happy,” warning that more rules would likely make an already $150,000–$250,000 process slower and costlier, and that background checks for intended parents are resisted on the ground that people who conceive “the old-fashioned way” face no such screen.
The Right View
The Daily Wire, in a column by Live Action’s Lila Rose, frames West’s contract as proof that commercial surrogacy “weaponizes the law against life,” turning “intimate human relationships” into terms a child never consents to and exposing a woman to more than $100,000 in liability for refusing a second-trimester abortion. Rose argues pregnancy “is not a service that can be purchased” and a child “is not a product,” and that “a woman should never face financial ruin because she refuses to undergo an abortion.” Fox News quotes Kallie Fell of the Center for Bioethics and Culture calling California the “wild, Wild West,” noting that unlike foster care there is no license, home study, or background-check regime for intended parents, so “if you have enough money to pay for it, then you can, by any means necessary, really have a child in California.” Fell and Heritage Foundation-cited reporting also present foreign, especially Chinese, use of U.S. surrogates as an unregulated route to American birthright citizenship; Fell says, “We absolutely need to close our borders to international surrogacy.”
Our Take (balanced)
The left’s strongest argument is that a lightly policed market produces foreseeable harm and legal messes—the Arcadia agency-in-a-home and the absence of licensing almost anywhere except New York—while still delivering wanted children in the typical case, so the live question is how to add safeguards without pricing people out or letting the state decide who may form a family. The right’s strongest argument is that contracts can demand an abortion or punish refusal, as in West’s case, and that children can be placed with adults who face none of the screening required of foster parents, showing commodification in which “the adults negotiate the terms” and “the child cannot.” The unresolved tension is whether commercial surrogacy is a family-building service that mainly needs consumer and child-welfare rules, or a category that should not exist because it treats gestation, disability, and parentage as bargainable terms.
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