Womb Beyond Borders: Mapping the Contours of Surrogacy, Sovereignty, and Legal Parenthood Within Transnational International Law

This paper examines the contentious arena of surrogacy in a globalized world, where law, biotechnology, and human rights traverse into a juncture to reshape the idea of parenthood. Across jurisdictions, the regulation of surrogacy reveals a recurring disjuncture between social reality and legal frameworks, producing what can best be described as a state of legal limbo. For instance, in Australia, the courts’ reliance on the “best interests of the child” has destabilized prohibitions on commercial surrogacy, illustrating how human rights reasoning unsettles national boundaries. Likewise, in New Zealand, reliance on outdated adoption law has blown the whistle on the ongoing misalignment between genetic truth, immigration policy, and family law, leaving children and parents in murky waters. Elsewhere, Europe’s approach has entrenched “genetic essentialism,” with the European Court of Human Rights privileging fathers’ biological ties while requiring mothers to adopt, thereby reinforcing gender discrimination. Israel narrates a different scenario where gay men crossing territorial and symbolic borders for surrogacy revealed both the exclusionary and transformative functions of law, culminating in the extension of surrogacy rights even to male couples. India’s Surrogacy (Regulation) Bill, 2020 on a similar stance reflects progress entwined with exclusion, denying homosexual couples access despite constitutional promise to equality. Sweden, meanwhile, has sustained polarized debates, producing a “split policy” that satisfies neither side while leaving families unprotected. These cases collectively illustrate the surging commodification of reproductive labour , the prioritization of genetics, and the disintegration of sovereignty. The paper upholds for a cohesive international framework that sets forth child welfare, surrogate autonomy, and the inclusive acknowledgment of various family structures within an equilibrium.