Last Friday, on the second day of the annual summit hosted by the Family Research Council and FRC Action, Them Before Us founder Katy Faust (pictured above) delivered a blistering critique of commercial surrogacy and modern marriage laws, arguing they have turned children into commodities.
"How did we get here, [from] a nation that used to elevate, exalt, protect children, to a place where they are being bought and sold in a global distribution market to anyone and everybody with a valid contract?" she asked.
Over the years, surrogacy and marriage laws in the United States have transitioned from a fractured patchwork of strict prohibitions to a highly regulated, widely permissive framework.
Modern surrogacy took root in 1980 with the first compensated traditional agreement, but it faced severe legal backlash following the highly publicized "Baby M" case (1986–1988), which led many states to criminalize or invalidate traditional surrogacy contracts. The legal tide turned with the emergence of gestational surrogacy (where the carrier has no genetic link to the child) and the landmark 1990 decision in Calvert v. Johnson in California, which established that gestational carriers are not the legal parents.
The legal landscape of marriage has also undergone a historic shift, especially since the U.S. Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage nationwide in Obergefell v. Hodges (2015), drastically expanding parental and reproductive rights for LGBTQ individuals. Data highlights this explosive growth, with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) tracking an increase from 727 gestational cycles in 1999 to more than 12,000 annual cycles today.
This momentum has culminated in major statutory overhauls — including New York in 2021 and Michigan in 2024 lifting their historic commercial bans — leaving nearly the entire country legally supportive of gestational arrangements.
Faust, however, pointed to a booming international market where children are procured through U.S. surrogates, and she warned that current legal structures allow infants to be separated permanently from their biological roots without proper safeguards.
According to the child advocate, the crisis stems from two pillars: third-party reproduction that fractures motherhood and the post-Obergefell legal framework that she argues made mothers and fathers optional in the eyes of the law.
"Surrogacy splices what God designed to be one person, mother, into three purchasable and optional women," said Faust. "When the Supreme Court made mothers, when they made husbands and wives optional in marriage, mothers and fathers became optional in parenthood."
Concluding that these industries cannot be regulated, she called instead for total abolition and a renewed legal push to prioritize child-centric policies.
AFA Action, the political and governmental affairs affiliate of the American Family Association (AFA), is a sponsor of the Pray Vote Stand Summit, a one-of-a-kind event in which like-minded believers engage in meaningful discussions on the intersection of faith, government and culture.
Editor's Note: American Family Association is the parent organization of the American Family News Network, which operates AFN.net.
