2025-2026 Global Surrogacy Law Roundup

The last two years have been among the most turbulent periods for global surrogacy law. Italy extended criminal exposure to surrogacy abroad, Greece closed the foreign-client channel, and the United States placed birthright citizenship before the Supreme Court. At the same time, Thailand is discussing reform after marriage equality, and some jurisdictions continue to handle parentage pragmatically in the child's best interests.

This article turns scattered legal news, official files and court processes into a policy map: which jurisdictions are tightening, which are opening, which issues remain unresolved, and what this means for families considering cross-border assisted reproduction.

Three Coordinates for Reading the Map

Before looking country by country, it helps to set three coordinates. They make a noisy legal landscape easier to classify.

Coordinate 1: tightening or opening

Tightening means a country uses law, case law or administrative review to restrict or prohibit surrogacy, especially for foreigners, commercial models or specific groups. Opening means eligibility expands to more family types or nationalities. The global center of gravity has been more tightening than opening, but the opening force has not disappeared.

Coordinate 2: who is affected

The same legal change can affect different people very differently. Ask whether it targets citizens or foreigners, everyone or specific groups such as single people and same-sex couples, commercial models or all forms of surrogacy.

Coordinate 3: in force or still pending

This is the easiest axis to misread. Drafts, proposals and hearings are not current law until they complete the process. Media coverage often makes discussion sound like implementation; family decisions need the status clearly separated.

The Tightening Side: Four Landmark Events

Four events define the force of the current tightening cycle.

Italy: criminal exposure for surrogacy abroad

Italy has prohibited surrogacy domestically since 2004. Law No. 169 of 4 November 2024 extended the reach of that ban abroad: where an Italian citizen engages in the relevant conduct outside Italy, the conduct can still be prosecuted under Italian law even if the destination country permits surrogacy.

Public debate often calls this a universal crime. More precisely, it is an aggressive assertion of jurisdiction over citizens' conduct abroad. Either way, the message is clear: a home country may move beyond post-birth recognition and treat the overseas arrangement itself as a criminal-risk issue.

Greece: the foreign-client channel closes

Greece was once one of the few European destinations offering a court-authorization model for foreign intended parents. Article 46 of Law 5197/2025 changed that framework by requiring both the intended mother and the surrogate to legally reside in Greece before a court can approve the arrangement. Short-term medical travel no longer fits the model.

Greece also moved to exclude single men and male same-sex couples from surrogacy by clarifying that inability to conceive due to gender is not a medical inability to carry a pregnancy. The result is a shift from an outward-facing compliance option to a resident-focused and group-limited model.

United States: birthright citizenship reaches the Supreme Court

The United States has long been associated with jus soli citizenship: children born on U.S. territory generally acquire U.S. citizenship. Executive Order 14160, signed on 20 January 2025, seeks to deny birthright citizenship to certain groups, especially where parents are unlawfully present or only temporarily present.

The order was immediately challenged and blocked by lower courts. Trump v. Barbara, No. 25-365 is now before the Supreme Court; the docket shows oral argument on 1 April 2026. As of this article's publication date, the merits outcome still requires monitoring. For families, uncertainty around the U.S. pathway now extends from cost and state law to the citizenship regime itself.

International level: opposition is consolidating

At the international level, several signals point toward tighter scrutiny. The EU's 2024 anti-trafficking amendment includes language on exploitation of surrogacy. OHCHR's 2025 report A/80/158 criticizes surrogacy through violence and exploitation frames. The Hague Conference decided in 2026 not to advance to a Special Commission to draft a cross-border parentage/surrogacy convention at this stage.

These signals do not operate as direct rules in one country, but they shape the atmosphere. Cross-border surrogacy is increasingly reviewed through women's protection, children's rights, trafficking, citizenship and parentage recognition together.

The Opening Side: Not Every Door Is Closing

If one looks only at the tightening side, it is easy to conclude that the world is closing down. That is not the full picture.

Thailand: reform after marriage equality

Thailand is the most important opening-side example. In January 2025, Thailand's marriage equality law took effect, making it the first country in Southeast Asia to recognize same-sex marriage. Against that background, health authorities have pushed amendments to the 2015 assisted reproduction law.

Public reporting indicates that the draft direction would replace gendered terms such as husband and wife with spouse, include married same-sex couples, allow foreign couples under specified conditions, and revisit export rules for embryos and gametes. But the key caution remains: a draft is not current law. Until enacted, foreign couples should not treat Thailand as already open.

Other pragmatic signals

Outside Thailand, there are scattered signals of pragmatism. Courts in some jurisdictions have addressed parentage after surrogacy case by case. Some European countries that prohibit domestic surrogacy may still recognize relationships created abroad through adoption or other routes when the child's best interests require stability.

These openings do not necessarily legalize the process itself. More often, they reduce post-birth status risk for the child and family after the fact.

At a Glance: Global Direction Table

The table compresses the main points. It should be read together with the status notes above.

Three Currents Behind the Trend

Protection versus freedom

The tightening side argues from protection: protecting surrogates from exploitation, children from commodification, and systems from trafficking or identity distortion. The opening side argues from freedom and equality: reproductive autonomy, the right to form a family, and equal family formation for different genders and sexual orientations.

Neither value can be dismissed easily. Global surrogacy law is the result of these values rising and falling in different cultural, political and religious settings.

National sovereignty versus cross-border reality

Surrogacy is almost naturally cross-border. A country may prohibit surrogacy at home but struggle to stop citizens from going abroad. Italy's overseas reach is one extreme expression of that sovereignty anxiety.

The pause in the Hague convention project shows the same difficulty from the other side: value differences are so wide that a unified international rule is difficult in the near term. Families therefore continue to carry country-by-country and case-by-case risk.

Political cycles

Surrogacy law is deeply political. It intersects with marriage equality, migration, religion and population policy, so it can move sharply with political cycles. U.S. birthright-citizenship litigation follows a change in administration, Italy's tightening reflects conservative politics, and Thailand's opening follows a wave of marriage equality.

What This Means for Chinese and Cross-Border Families

For families considering cross-border assisted reproduction, four practical principles matter.

Closing View: Staying Steady in Uncertainty

The overall feeling after reading this map may be unease. Rules are moving quickly and the world feels less predictable. But uncertainty cannot be eliminated; it can be managed.

A safer posture is not to chase every headline or rely on hope. It is to build a method that does not depend on luck: rely on rules in force, make evidence-based decisions, re-check at key moments, and always leave room for the rules to change.