As the Supreme Court justices hear arguments in the Trump v. Barbara case on birthright citizenship, some have raised concern over reports of international commercial surrogacy (often called “renting wombs”), highlighting the importance of the battle over birthright citizenship.
And despite the fact that the issue has reached the nation’s highest court and involves some of the US’s biggest adversaries, media coverage has generally been scant.
Chinese billionaire and fantasy videogame creator Xu Bo, according to a Wall Street Journal (Center bias) report, has had more than 100 children born through surrogacy in the US. Bo, known for his critiques of feminism, said in 2023 at a confidential hearing that he “hoped to have 20 or so US-born children through surrogacy–boys, because they’re superior to girls–to one day take over his business.”
Another wealthy Chinese business owner, Wang Huiwu, reportedly purchased 20 eggs from American women, with the plan of fathering “100 high net worth babies,” according to an article from Britain’s The Times (Center).
In July 2025, after a 2-month-old was taken to an Los Angeles hospital with injuries medical professionals suspected were from child abuse, FBI agents raided a mansion on the outskirts of LA and found 21 kids, mostly born by surrogacy. Since the raid, the unmarried Chinese couple living at the home has reportedly had at least five more surrogate-born babies in Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Georgia, all of which were taken into state custody.
These cases don’t appear to have been isolated. A 2024 study published by the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM) found that over a six-year-span, roughly 42% of the foreign nationals who traveled to the US for surrogacy were from China.
Calls For Investigation and New Legislation
In February, Senators Tom Cotton (R- AR) and Rick Scott (R-FL) sent a letter to US Attorney General Pam Bondi “requesting that the Department of Justice (DOJ) investigate surrogacy centers operated by foreign nationals.” The letter stated that “Chinese nationals are systematically exploiting America’s surrogacy and birthright citizenship laws” and that over 107 Chinese-owned surrogacy agencies were uncovered in Southern California alone.
A bill titled the Stopping Adversarial Foreign Exploitation of Kids in Domestic Surrogacy (SAFE KIDS) Act was introduced in the Senate in November of 2025. The bill, if passed, would “prevent citizens of foreign adversarial nations from entering into or enforcing surrogacy contracts in the United States.”
The text of the bill cites the Arcadia, California case mentioned above, which “reveal[ed] that surrogacy is even being used to facilitate human trafficking” and it is “an acute national security threat.” The bill specified that the foreign adversarial nations would consist of those listed under section 4872(f)(2) of title 10. This list currently includes North Korea, China, Russia, and Iran.
Another “Loophole” Being Discussed
In February, Rep. Tom Tiffany (R-WI) introduced legislation that targets an alleged loophole reportedly being used by the People’s Republic of China.
An Obama-era law, while not pertaining to commercial surrogacy, allows women from China to travel visa-free to the US-owned Northern Mariana Islands “to give birth and secure U.S. citizenship for their kids,” according to Tiffany.
The original law was intended to stimulate the Northern Mariana Islands’ tourism economy, but Tiffany argues that it’s created a loophole.
If enacted, Tiffany’s legislation would “prohibit the Secretary of Homeland Security from admitting to the United States any national of the People’s Republic of China without a valid visa.”
From “Birth Tourism” to “Renting Wombs”
Birth tourism refers to the act of traveling to the US to give birth with the purpose of the child receiving the benefits of US citizenship.
In 2015, State Department policy changes made such endeavors more accessible. It allowed anyone carrying a B-type visa, which is a nonimmigrant visa that allows temporary travel to the US for either business or medical purposes, to use giving birth in the US as a reason for medical travel.
In 2020, however, a rule change made it harder for birth tourism companies to continue operations, deeming “that travel to the United States with the primary purpose of obtaining U.S. citizenship for a child by giving birth in the United States is an impermissible basis for the issuance of a B nonimmigrant visa.”
This change, coupled with the travel restrictions brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, seemed to spur a shift from tourism births to womb rental and commercial surrogacy practices.
Scale of the Operations
According to the ASRM study, in 2020, foreigners had nearly 5,000 pregnancies via US citizen surrogates. The majority of the foreigners were Chinese.
California, according to Hatch Fertility (an established egg donor and surrogacy agency), sets the “gold standard for surrogacy in the United States.” This is because the legal framework is broad and allows for gestational surrogacy and traditional surrogacy, as well as both unpaid and compensated surrogacy arrangements. Gestational surrogacy is when the eggs and sperm are from the intended parents or donors, and traditional surrogacy utilizes the egg from the surrogate mother.
California laws also do not prohibit any strict age or residency requirements, and the birth certificates when the child is born will have the intended parent listed rather than the surrogate, regardless of where in the world the intended parents hold citizenship.
Many other states are also considered “surrogacy-friendly,” according to Family Source Consultants, a “Gestational Surrogacy & Egg Donation Agency,” with states like Illinois, Washington, Florida, Massachusetts, Wisconsin, and Ohio rating at the top of the list.
A 2022 article from NPR (Lean Left) said “it is difficult to know how many Chinese couples use surrogacy services in California because the state’s health department says it does not keep track.” However, NPR spoke with several surrogacy agencies who “suggested there were hundreds, if not thousands of cases in the state a year.”
NPR also spoke with a surrogacy agency called Fat Daddy, which specializes in these services for clients in China. Zheng, the co-founder of the agency, going by first name only due to some of the laws and sensitivities around international surrogacy, said “Chinese demand for surrogacy and birth tourism services was so high he used to rent out entire apartment buildings for Chinese families.”
National Security Implications
Michael Lucci, CEO of the national security organization State Armor, estimated to the Washington Examiner (Lean Right) that “China is creating arguably a million or maybe more Chinese Communist Party loyal American citizens through surrogacy, through birth tourism.” Lucci added that “It would not be very hard to sprinkle them across the swing states and just determine who the president is going to be based on who they favor.”
Lucci also highlighted the “ability of these Chinese-raised American citizens to purchase land near military installations” as another security risk, adding that Congress regulating the industry is one way to address these threats.
Senior Contributor for Breitbart News (Right), Peter Schweizer, wrote a book titled The Invisible Coup: How American Elites and Foreign Powers Use Immigration as a Weapon. Schweizer in the book said that “Chinese nationals, with the support of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), are engaging in a massive Handmaid’s Tale-style scheme of using U.S. surrogates to carry and give birth to children who are then granted birthright citizenship.” Schweizer called the practice a “byzantine and suspicious form of birthright citizenship,” explaining that senior CCP officials are raising their American citizen babies in China.
Schweizer also claimed the CCP “views itself not simply as a competing power, but as a superior civilization that must vanquish the decrepit, corrupt, and evil West.”
The New Yorker (Left) pointed out that “commercial surrogacy is banned in many countries, but no federal laws govern the practice in the U.S.” The Wall Street Journal said “the market has grown so sophisticated” that “Chinese parents have had U.S.-born children without stepping foot in the country.”
CNN (Lean Left) said that “while there is currently a debate in the U.S. over birthright citizenship, some surrogacy centers say they carefully screen applicants, and require couples to demonstrate a medical reason for seeking surrogacy.” The article was framed around the story of a “Chinese gay couple” that were simply utilizing the surrogacy programs in the US because of the practice being illegal in China.
According to the New York Times (Lean Left):
Proponents of birthright citizenship say that the scale of the problem is marginal. They argue that it can be addressed through regulation and law enforcement without eliminating what has long been considered a central tenet of the United States — equality at birth, regardless of race, religion or the immigration status of the parents.
The Current Fight Over Birthright Citizenship
The Supreme Court started hearing arguments over the constitutionality of Trump’s executive order on birthright citizenship on April 1.
The executive order, titled Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship, is intended to end birthright citizenship in the US for people traveling to the US as well as for those unauthorized to be here.
So far, the lower courts that have weighed in have ruled the order unconstitutional. The Trump administration, according to SCOTUS Blog (Center), “contends that those rulings–as well as the longstanding view that virtually everyone born in the United States is entitled to U.S. citizenship–are based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the constitution.” Those challenging the Trump administration’s position say the change “is asking for nothing less than a remaking of our Nation’s constitutional foundations,” adding that it “would cast a shadow over the citizenship of millions upon millions of Americans, going back generations.”
According to the Washington Examiner, whether or not Trump’s executive order applies to children born through surrogacy may hinge on the definition of one word in the order.
The executive order defines the “mother” and “father” as the “immediate female [and] immediate male biological progenitor[s] of the child, but the term “progenitor has not been explicitly defined by the order.
A White House spokeswoman, when asked about the issue of foreign surrogacy, told the Washington Examiner that “Uninhibited birth tourism poses a tremendous cost to taxpayers and threatens our national security. President Trump’s Executive Order ends this practice and is consistent with the policies of most countries around the world.”
Also speaking with the Examiner, Daniel Di Martino, an expert on immigration and fellow at the Manhattan Institute, said that as it is now, birthright citizenship is “geographic, not genetic.” Martino explains that “the question is not who the biological parents are but where the child is born.”
Still, Trump's order would restrict birthright citizenship to children of “U.S. citizens and permanent residents” using the term “biological progenitor.” This term, if the order is deemed by the Supreme Court to be constitutional, is likely to lead to more lawsuits. The meaning of progenitor could be taken to mean either the genetic parents of the donated egg or sperm, or could be tied to the surrogate mother. The surrogate mother, while possibly not genetically the mother, could be argued as being so, considering she did contribute to the creation of the child.
Cases with the use of anonymous egg and sperm donors could also further complicate matters, as the unknown status of the donors would make it difficult to determine the citizenship status of the biological parents.
With the Supreme Court’s decision on birthright citizenship not expected until late June or early July, it is unclear what will happen next.
It is also unclear what the decision will mean in terms of international commercial surrogacy.
However, what is clear is the several voices across the spectrum that have expressed concern with the practice, whether on the grounds of national security or ethical implications.
Written by News and Bias Assistant Johnathon Held (Right bias).
Reviewed by Managing Editor Andy Gorel (Center) and News Analyst and Social Media Editor Emily Allen (Left).
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