How Colombia has turned into a “paradise for reproductive tourism”
We are used to discussing surrogacy in fairly abstract terms. If the neoliberal idea of us being nothing but self-interested agents selling our skillsets, including our ability to bear children, in an all-encompassing marketplace sounds like an aberration to most of us; women’s sacrosanct right to self-determination – “my body, my choice” – might nonetheless be reason enough to support a practice that, at best, can be seen as an act of selfless altruism.
What happens, though, when these justifications, which largely assume a world of gender parity and freedom from want, encounter our own world of long-existing disparities and endemic economic violence?
In the article ‘Cuando seas grande no recordarás que naciste en un país extranjero’ [When You Grow Up You Won’t Remember You Were Born in a Foreign Country], Marina Sardiña at the Spanish non-profit and investigative journalism platform La Marea offers an in-depth, balanced look at the situation in Colombia and shows how economic inequality and a lack of opportunities especially for young mothers, coupled with a legal vacuum (partly justified by good intentions), can end up being an environment which allows for deception, exploitation, and abuse.
The piece starts by telling the story of Martha, a 30-year-old mother who has recently acted as a surrogate to a couple in France. As she explains, she was in economic dire straits, and now has to deal with the consequences of an emergency caesarean as well as having to let go of the child she bore. Through stories like hers, as well as those of women who found themselves former surrogates turned recruiters, so-called “referidoras” and even a former worker of one of the clinics – the author exposes the true workings of a system that acts through a veneer of altruism, but in effect preys on the most vulnerable and economically marginalised.
They explain how in theory prospective surrogate mothers have to fulfil certain conditions as a way to avoid exploitation. Indeed, some of them must be prepped by more expert ones to make it through the interviews.
As the narrative progresses, it becomes clear how most of these requirements – for example, the fact that they should be mothers to at least one other child – act as a mere cover for an arrangement that “utilises” them at every step of the process and keeps them captive both legally and economically. (Paulina – whose name was changed like those of all other women who appear in the piece – admits how she would often paper over candidates’ need for cash and come up with some other “socially acceptable” reason as part of her former role at the clinic.)
For their service, surrogates are paid in the region of 11,500 euros, which is a very considerable sum in a country where 43% of the population makes less than 310 euros per month, the purported minimum wage. As the author explains, this fee is broken down into instalments specifically designed to incentivise surrogates to see their pregnancy through and eventually give up the child. Likewise, by entering an agreement, they are subject to all sorts of obligations, including the ban on travelling and seeking an abortion, which severely limit their freedom and agency over their own body.
The very system of referidoras in which former surrogates groom new candidates in exchange for a finder’s fee seemsdesigned to sustain the fiction that these women came to surrogacy out of their volition, taking the clinics which advertise the practice off the hook.
These ads not only tend to couch surrogacy in the language of generosity, depicting it as a selfless act of philanthropy, but also severely downplay the health risks involved. The author relays the story – horrific in its matter-of-fact banality – of Elena. After experiencing a spontaneous miscarriage, she developed a myxoma [a benign tumour] as a result of the hormonal treatments. However, the clinic refused to pay for its removal. “When the baby is no longer with you, the attention toward you disappears … it is like you are no longer important.”
Not all women interviewed had a negative experience. The author, for instance, includes the testimony of Diana – a Venezuelan woman 37-weeks into her pregnancy who will use the money to go back and open a restaurant in her country. However, the general feeling you get from reading the piece is that by and large women who go on to act as surrogates do so mainly for financial reasons and often have little idea of what they are signing up for even if they have all gone through pregnancy before.
An important aspect that the author explores in the piece is the lack of legislation and unwillingness to broach the subject politically. It is this laissez faire attitude and lack of clear rules and guarantees that create the grey areas which then allow the exploitation to continue.
The original article written by Marina Sardiña in collaboration with Marco Dalla Stella, ‘Cuando seas grande no recordarás que naciste en un país extranjero’, was published in Spanish on October 13, 2025 in La Marea.
It is available here.
La Marea is an investigative journalism platform and a non-profit organisation run as a cooperative of journalists.
