How Europe's Surrogacy Industry Is Turning Into a Black Market Exploiting Women?

The surrogacy industry in Europe has grown to conceal a black market that traffics women across borders to harvest their eggs and then abandons them in rundown hotels.

The global surrogacy market is expected to grow from $22 billion to $129 billion by 2032, with the European Parliament classifying it as human trafficking.

This practice remains legal for British individuals seeking children through international arrangements under a parental order, and lawyer Nino Andriashvili has represented several victims of surrogacy violations in Georgia, stating that the imbalance of power between surrogate mothers and agencies is a core issue, adding that having a contract does not mean women’s rights are protected.

Relatedly, a high-profile case emerged against a Georgian agency involving women from Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Ukraine, and Russia, recruited via social media through advertisements promising up to $30,000. One victim, a mother of two from Kyrgyzstan, traveled to Georgia on February 14, 2024, after her marriage collapsed and she lost her job, then became pregnant with twins following a contract with the agency.

Later, the 30-year-old woman fell ill with gestational diabetes without any blood tests to confirm the cause, underwent a cesarean section on January 31, 2025, and was left in a storage room due to a lack of beds in the recovery ward. After leaving the hospital, she returned to a cold, unheated, and powerless apartment in Tbilisi during a harsh winter, receiving $400 monthly throughout the pregnancy, but her final payments never arrived.

Meanwhile, the agency stopped paying surrogates on time, cut off support for daily needs, and relocated 17 women and 10 children to a dilapidated hotel in a remote neighborhood of Tbilisi, according to officials. Many suffered painful scars without medical care post-delivery. The company declared bankruptcy a month later, abandoned dozens of surrogate mothers, closed its doors, and placed around 100 more surrogates’ newborns in Georgia over the next twelve months.

In a judicial development, the Tbilisi City Court convicted the company’s founders on June 30, 2026, on charges of embezzling funds from surrogate mothers and biological parents, sentencing each to ten years in prison. Nino described the case as significant because it revealed that problems in the surrogacy sector go beyond contractual and financial disputes, creating systemic gaps that enable real exploitation of surrogate mothers and violations of their rights.

Meanwhile, Tbilisi police launched an investigation last year into a human trafficking network that detained Thai women, extracted their eggs, and confiscated their passports upon arrival under the pretense of being surrogates in exchange for 500 pounds monthly and free housing.

One victim recounted being held in a group home with other women, injected with fertility hormones later allegedly sold for use in artificial insemination.

Similarly, experts point to Georgia as a node in a transnational black market chain linking Turkey and Northern Cyprus, where surrogacy violations thrive, despite being legal in its neighboring countries while banned in Turkey—creating a cross-border market, according to Nino, who added that prohibited surrogacy operations can be moved from one country to another without sufficient legal safeguards.

A separate investigation uncovered a trafficking network spanning the three countries, beginning with an anonymous tip received on September 3, 2021, by the Turkish Ministry of Health about a fertility clinic in Istanbul’s Beşiktaş district targeting vulnerable young women, including minors, with promises of large payments.

Women were given fertility drugs before allegedly being smuggled to Georgia and Northern Cyprus using forged documents, but authorities identified only one suspect after a year-long investigation, and the Istanbul prosecutor’s office closed the case in January 2023.

On another front, data shows 130 single British men applied to become legal parents of foreign-born surrogate children between 2019 and 2025, compared to just 23 applications for domestic surrogacy within the UK during the same period.

Activists describe these figures as a troubling trend: single men purchasing children from foreign women living in poverty. While UK law bans commercial surrogacy that pays women more than expense reimbursement, it permits international arrangements provided a parental order confirms the surrogate’s consent.

In this context, Helen Gibson, founder of the organization SrogiS Consor, fights to criminalize seeking surrogacy abroad, describing the trade as barbaric and international child shopping, warning that women abroad cannot change their minds or claim rights over the child, reducing them to incubators whose bodies are controlled by contracts both before and after birth, overriding maternal instincts.