Force, fraud, and coercion : Bridging from knowledge of intercountry adoption to global surrogacy

This report discusses concerns raised by participants of Thematic Area 4 (Force, Fraud and Coercion) of the International Forum on Intercountry Adoption and Global Surrogacy held in August 2014. There has been a significant body of research on intercountry adoption practices over the past 30 years; force, fraud, and coercion have been identified in a small but important component of the literature. However, this knowledge in intercountry adoption has not yet truly bridged into research in global surrogacy with some recent exceptions. Learning from the past of ICA and connecting the evidence is particularly relevant due to the fact that the need for international law focused on global surrogacy and issues of parentage has been considered. The lessons learned from a history of corruption and human rights abuses are important to integrate when formulating future international law and regulations to protect vulnerable peoples in global surrogacy practices. Concepts of exploitation and human trafficking are explored with considerations of how to prevent, protect, and prosecute as emergent focal points of discourse. Effective prosecution of crimes, implications for a convention on global surrogacy, exploitation in global surrogacy arrangements, emotional safeguards for surrogate mothers, limited knowledge about the sense of origin, and experiences of children born through surrogacy are all areas in need of continued research.