Demand from Chinese parents has led to the thriving US ‘rent-a-womb’ industry, says researcher.
The “rent-a-womb” industry pipelines children born of surrogates in the United States to parents in China, a researcher said. Babies born this way automatically gain U.S. birthright citizenship.
According to Emma Waters, a research associate for the Center for Life, Religion, and Family at The Heritage Foundation, the Chinese “rent-a-womb” industry has been booming in the United States for about a decade, particularly in California. The state’s permissive laws on commercial surrogacy and in-vitro fertilization (IVF) have made it an attractive destination for Chinese couples seeking these services.
Surrogacy is completely banned in China, so Chinese couples turn to American fertility clinics to create embryos with their biological makeup and have the baby in the United States. This is made possible by the birthright citizenship laws, which grant the child full U.S. citizenship, regardless of their Chinese nationality.
Emma Waters explained in an interview on Epoch TV’s “Crossroads” program that when the child turns 21, even the parents can apply for a green card and eventually obtain citizenship, which is a faster and cheaper process compared to traditional methods.
Threat to National Security
Emma Waters emphasized that granting foreign nationals access to American citizenship through American women poses a significant national security threat. These children, who have been raised in China and are loyal to their homeland, are not flagged as foreign nationals when they apply for jobs or work in research labs in the United States.
Ms. Waters highlighted the lack of a publicly available database listing these children, making it difficult for employers to know their background. She called for the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party to investigate Chinese investment in Americans through Chinese children created in America via IVF and commercial surrogacy.
How Fertility Industry Works
Chinese nationals have the option to create an embryo using their own sperm and egg or purchase a sperm or egg when they connect with a fertility clinic, particularly in California. They can even create an embryo without leaving China by working with a U.S.-based agency to send their reproductive material to an IVF lab and implant it in a hired surrogate in the United States. Many fertility clinics in California have direct or indirect connections to China, offering Chinese language options and employing doctors or administrators who have lived in China.
According to Ms. Waters, some fertility clinics have reported that up to 50 percent of their clients in a given year are from China alone. Chinese nationals have expressed the desire to have a child with dual U.S. and Chinese citizenship to have the option of choosing which country to live in the future.
The U.S. market for fertility clinic services was estimated at nearly $8 billion in 2022 and is expected to more than double by the end of 2028.
Changing Essence of Childbearing
Emma Waters pointed out that the way childbearing is viewed in the United States started changing after the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Roe v. Wade case in 1973, which legalized abortion nationwide. Children became an option that parents could choose to have or not, rather than a natural outcome of marriage or sexual intercourse.
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