Florida surrogacy fight ignites child trafficking allegations: ‘It’s akin to slavery’

Florida just became the first state to seriously challenge the surrogacy industry after a gay couple living in France contracted with a woman in Florida to be their surrogate. The couple petitioned the Broward County court for early parental rights.While Judge Marlon Weiss granted their petition, he questioned whether surrogacy is constitutional, claiming it violates the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery.“Judge Marlon Weiss argued that if unborn children are legally entitled to personhood, then they cannot legally be part of a contractual arrangement that treats them as property,” BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey explains on “Relatable.”In November, Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier moved to intervene after the child was born, also calling the practice unconstitutional.“Today, registered sex offenders and foreigners — including Chinese nationals — buy thousands of babies from U.S. surrogacy companies. This modern day slavery is morally wrong, endangers children, and threatens national security. It must be stopped,” Uthmeier wrote in a post on X.“It is akin to slavery,” Stuckey agrees. “Like, if we genuinely believe that the unborn are human beings, it follows that buying and selling them is slavery.”“And that is what is happening during surrogacy, especially when it is the surrogacy that is by two men, because you have to purchase the eggs of one woman and rent the womb of another woman. And so, you are purchasing half of the DNA of that child from the genetic mother,” she says.And this is why Stuckey believes it’s “a form of trafficking.”“I’m not saying all of those children will literally after birth be harmed or be trafficked or be abused in some way, but it is a way of commodifying women’s bodies and children. It is. It is a way of saying, ‘I don’t care what you have to go through. I want this child,’” she says.Stuckey recalls an interview she once did with a woman named Brittney, who had previously carried a baby for a gay couple.“She was then diagnosed with cancer when she was about 20 or so weeks pregnant, and the couple urged her to abort her child, and she didn’t want to have an abortion,” Stuckey explains, noting that the couple wanted her to get an abortion because the child was going to be born premature.“She did end up giving birth, and the child died. She did end up, you know, having chemotherapy. But the dads, one of whom was biologically related to this baby, didn’t even show up at the hospital — not to check on her, not to hold the baby,” she says.“I’m telling you, that kind of story is so common. Many times in these surrogacy contracts, these women are obligated to say they will get an abortion if the intended parents want an abortion,” she continues.“I think that happens far more often than we realize,” she says. “These babies have no rights.”Want more from Allie Beth Stuckey?To enjoy more of Allie’s upbeat and in-depth coverage of culture, news, and theology from a Christian, conservative perspective, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.