Repeal intrinsically evil surrogacy legislation!

Media Release 6 June 2026

The NZ parliament is currently giving consideration to a government Bill, entitled : Improving Arrangements for Surrogacy, which awaits its second reading.

Right to Life believes that maternal surrogacy is fundamentally and intrinsically evil. No legislation for surrogacy can be improved with amendments, surrogacy is fundamentally wrong, it is not a health service and the Surrogacy legislation should be repealed.

Surrogacy is intrinsically evil, as it goes against the natural law. It violates the law of God and violates the intrinsic dignity of both the female surrogate and the child.

In God’s beautiful plan for the procreation of the human race, procreation should be the fruit of marital intimacy, in a marriage of exclusively one man and one woman. A child should be received as a gift from God, and not made into a tradeable commodity.

Surrogacy reduces the dignity of life of the child to that of an exchangeable commodity.

Right to Life upholds the teaching of the Catholic Church, which believes that every child has a right to be conceived within the womb of his or her mother and cared for in that womb for the first nine months of the child’s life. Surrogacy imposes cruel abandonment by the birth mother on the child. The child has bonded with the mother while living in her womb. When the child is born, it looks for its mother, who is now gone, substituted for another mother.

Surrogacy exploits women and treats the womb as a subject for hire in a commercial contract designed to produce the desired commodity, a human child. There are two forms of surrogacy, traditional surrogacy where the surrogate mother uses her eggs and she is thus genetically related to the child. Gestational surrogacy where the surrogate is not related to the child, which is conceived with IVF.

Surrogacy involves the use of in-vitro fertilization IVF, which is also intrinsically evil, with donor eggs, fertilisation in a dish and the storage of surplus embryos. It treats the procreation of a child as a right and not a gift from God.

In its report to Parliament on surrogacy, the NZ Law Commission recommended that surrogacy be recognised “as a legitimate method of family building.”

Right to Life believes that it is appalling that the Law Commission supports surrogacy, which violates the human rights of women and children and is available to trans couples, male couples and single men.

It is disappointing that the Law Commission does not support the rights of children to be conceived exclusively in their mother’s womb, and to be loved and cared for by their biological mother and father.

Surrogacy provides the surrogate woman complete control over the life of the child in her hired womb. She may terminate the pregnancy at any time, and can decide to keep the child if she wishes. The biological parents have no jurisdiction over the child until they have completed the adoption process.

It is estimated that there are 50 babies born in New Zealand from surrogacy every year. It is not known how many are born to same sex male couples.

There are many European Union nations which prohibit surrogacy, including France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Austria, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland.

Right to Life is committed to continue campaigning for the repeal of the surrogacy legislation which violates God’s law and the human rights of women and children.

Ken Orr,

Spokesperson,

Right to Life New Zealand Inc.