In recent years, the exponential expansion in the cross border utilization of new reproductive technologies has produced results for many seeking options to infertility, even as deep regulatory divides have fueled a growing international market in which relatively privileged individuals and third party intermediaries, who benefit financially from the commodification of reproduction, exploit low income and poor women for their reproductive capacities.  Gestational surrogacy and the trade in human eggs in particular have become pervasive international phenomena in which women's poverty and subordinate status throughout the world often increase their exposure to gender-based exploitation and physical harms.

Unequal relationships between the buyers (intended parents) and the women workers who sell their fertility organs and eggs favor the needs and desires of the former.  These unequal transactions, in the absence of regulation of the fertility-industrial complex, result in inadequate informed consent, coercion, low payments, poor health care, short and long-term physical and emotional problems, and increased risk of death. In addition, children conceived through exploitative commercial transactions, as well as intended parents, may suffer as a direct result of these arrangements. While the full magnitude of the harms resulting from reproductive exploitation is unknown due to the inability to generate and study empirical data, the lack of regulation and/or oversight in many jurisdictions, reports of egregious harms continue to surface.  Recognizing multiple dangers and thorny justice and rights based challenges, and ethical issues, many countries have banned or severely limited these practices, turning countries with no regulation into anything-goes free zones.  In fact, the two countries with practically no regulation, India and the U.S., are the world’s largest suppliers of surrogates.

In addition to the above referenced challenges to protecting women’s health and well-being, very often these practices are rife with vast inequities.  Women who serve as surrogates tend to be economically vulnerable and are lured by the payments involved as a desperately needed income supplement.  At many clinics in India, surrogates recruited from among the poor are warehoused assembly-line style in long rows of beds where they are confined for the duration of their pregnancy  These women have few legal or regulatory protections, however, making them ripe for exploitation and fraud.

Indeed, the scope of the market, the demographic characteristics of the people affected, the medical, legal and financial risks they undertake, and the massive potential for exploitation all remain largely unknown to the public and policymakers alike. At the same time, the risk of ethical, social, medical and psychological harm to all parties involved – the women who agree to rent their bodies, the families that hire them, and the resulting children – is too great for societies to remain in the dark. There is a resounding need for further study, international collaboration, open debate, and tighter regulation of this global marketplace.
The global commercial fertility industry has created a market for virtually every aspect of human reproduction: sperm, eggs, nine months use of a womb, and the creation of an embryo. The fertility-industrial complex is a stunning array of businesses -- practically a microcosm of the entire global economy. It includes the manufacturing of fertility hormones, harvesting of renewable natural resources (sperm and egg collection), international trade (foreign adoptions), expert services (IVF and other high-tech medicine), long-term storage (embryo banks) and even rental real estate (surrogate mothers).  As the industry continues to grow and affect more and more people’s lives all over the world, awareness and understanding must match the development of technology and practice of this global phenomenon.

In light of the growing global pervasiveness of these phenomena and their ethical, medical, legal and social implications, an international group of social science, life science, and humanities researchers are proposing to conduct symposia conducted by what is quickly becoming an established international collaborative to address the many issues and challenges, share information and develop policy recommendations for international action. We are engaged scholars and graduate students, medical and scientific professionals, engaged civil society organizations with global reach and years of experience researching the issues and advocating for national and international regulation. Collectively, among a number of ngos and civil society advocates, we are galvanizing a wide ranging and professionally adept collective expertise to produce an international network, create a task force calling for a United Nations (UN) Declaration on reproductive trafficking, engineer a precedent-setting collaboration on ova donation and gestational surrogacy regulation, promote documentary films on these subjects, written and published scholarly articles on the issues, and plan a panel for the 56th Session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) in 2012 to address these issues. By seeking to build such an outreach we seek to develop the focus, expertise and advocacy on these issues that encompasses the realities of developments in the global North and South.