Global surrogacy industry’s exploitation risks: How neoliberal adoption, racial capitalism, and state neglect enable systemic child trafficking
Original framing: “California couple charged with child abuse in surrogacy scheme involving at least 21 kids” — The Guardian - World
This case echoes historical patterns of child trafficking, from the *Baby Scoop Era* (1950s–1980s), where Indigenous children were forcibly adopted by white families, to the *Baby Gammy* scandal in Cambodia (2016), where surrogates were abandoned with disabled children. The racialized dynamics of surrogacy—where women of color are disproportionately exploited—mirror colonial-era practices of extracting labor from marginalized groups. California’s child welfare system, like many others, has roots in eugenics-era policies that pathologized non-nuclear families, creating the conditions for today’s enforcement gaps.
This case is not an isolated tragedy but a symptom of three interlocking crises: the neoliberal commodification of reproduction, the racialized labor dynamics of global surrogacy markets, and the state’s failure to protect children when kinship is treated as a legal transaction rather than a cultural or spiritual bond.
The Western media’s focus on criminalizing the ‘abusive couple’ obscures the systemic enablers—law firms, underfunded foster systems, and the racial capitalism that drives surrogacy exploitation—while erasing Indigenous models of communal child-rearing and the voices of marginalized surrogates. Historical parallels to colonial-era child trafficking and modern orphan scandals (e.g., Cambodia, China) reveal how today’s surrogacy industry replicates old patterns of extraction, now dressed in the language of ‘choice’ and ‘innovation.’ The solution lies not in punitive bans but in decolonizing reproductive laws, centering Indigenous kinship frameworks, and building community-based alternatives that prioritize collective welfare over market logic.