The “rent-a-womb” industry pipelines children born of surrogates in the United States to parents in China — babies born this way automatically gain U.S. birthright citizenship.
- Surrogacy, a practice where a woman carries a pregnancy and gives birth to a baby for another person or couple, is completely banned in China.
- Therefore, Chinese couples use services offered by American fertility clinics that create for them embryos potentially having the biological makeup of the Chinese nationals, and birth the baby in the United States.
- When that child turns 21, even the parents can apply for a green card and eventually get citizenship—a much faster and cheaper process than if traditional methods.