Checklist: California surrogacy oversight gaps, alleged abuse case in Arcadia, industry growth without strong safeguards, concerns about foreign demand, and calls for tighter rules.
A disturbing California case has put the surrogacy business under a harsh spotlight, and the questions around it keep piling up. What should be a tightly watched process has instead been described as chaotic, loose, and dangerously easy to exploit.
Guojun Xuan, 66, and Silvia Zhang, 39, were arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to commit child abuse after authorities said they ran a surrogacy operation out of their Arcadia home. Prosecutors allege the couple abused more than a dozen children born through surrogacy, including infants as young as 2 months old, inside their multimillion-dollar residence.
Kallie Fell, executive director of the Center for Bioethics and Culture, said the situation reflects a system that has gone off the rails. “I say it all the time. It’s the wild, Wild West,” she said, pointing to an industry she believes is packed with weak oversight and too many blind spots.
The accusations are brutal. Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman called the alleged treatment “appalling and revolting,” saying the children were not raised in a loving home but in one where discipline reportedly crossed into violence and punishment.
Officials say the couple also operated Future Spring Surrogacy from the same property, recruiting surrogates and paying them large sums. At least eight surrogates reportedly said they were pushed with aggressive tactics and given false impressions about the family’s living conditions.
That part of the story matters just as much as the criminal charges. A surrogacy agency operating from a private home, with no clear licensing requirement and no broad state system watching over it, leaves plenty of room for abuse to hide in plain sight.
Fell argued that the process is not limited to hopeful parents facing infertility, despite how it is often sold. “The thing about the case is that I wish it was shocking for me,” she said. “Because of the space I work in, I get to hear shocking stories around the globe — things that people don’t realize the surrogacy industry has grown into. It’s not just a place where couples who have been struggling with infertility go as a last resort to have a child.”
She also said the money flowing through the market has changed the entire game. “I mean, this has really turned into, if you have enough money to pay for it, then you can, by any means necessary, really have a child in California,” she added.
That criticism lands because California does not require a license to open a surrogacy agency, and there is no single, comprehensive regulatory framework keeping the whole industry in line. In a market this valuable, that kind of openness can turn into an invitation for bad actors.
Surrogacy has become a billion-dollar global business, and California sits near the center of it. For many families, it is a path to parenthood, but the lack of strong child-focused protections has raised fears that the system puts adults and contracts first while leaving children exposed.
Fell compared the screening used in surrogacy with the far stricter process required for foster care. “I was a foster parent,” she said. “My husband and I went through gobs of courses, gobs of home studies, background checks, everything — really under a microscope. The same is not true for surrogacy. It doesn’t apply.”
The case also reflects a broader trend with international demand, especially from China. A 2024 Heritage Foundation report said foreign nationals, many from China, have increasingly turned to American surrogates because commercial surrogacy is banned in China.
That cross-border demand adds another layer of tension, especially when federal law does not provide a clear national framework. Conservative critics argue that the setup creates a lane for wealthy foreign clients to pursue American birthright citizenship through surrogacy arrangements, even while other countries restrict or ban the practice.
Fell said that loophole should not stay open. “We absolutely need to close our borders to international surrogacy,” she said. “Why do we need folks from overseas coming, renting wombs here in the United States?”
In California, that question is not going away anytime soon. With allegations this serious and a system this loose, the pressure for real oversight is only getting louder, and the industry’s biggest gaps are now out in the open for everyone to see.
