There has been yet another horrible consequence of the U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) getting the interpretation of the 14th Amendment wrong when it comes to birthright citizenship.
As our Nate Jackson wrote back in June:
How in the world does it make any sense to construe the 14th Amendment to confer the lifetime reward and blessing of American citizenship on an anchor baby? Through no fault of its own, that baby was born to a woman who blatantly broke the law to be here, often specifically in order to create the circumstances of that birth. This isn’t just women who cross the southern border when they’re eight months pregnant. This is Chinese birth tourists exploiting our horribly misguided system.
That last part has taken a more terrible turn in the case of Chinese billionaire Xu Bo, who is estimated to have sired more than 100 children (his former girlfriend claims he created 300) via the underregulated surrogacy industry. Those children are now American citizens thanks to the misinterpretation of SCOTUS.
Xu himself hasn’t disclosed a number, though he recently posted an image on social media depicting about 100 young children sitting in rows in an auditorium, all suspiciously looking alike. The billionaire wrote, “Mr. Xu Bo believes in the philosophy that more children bring more blessings, and he wishes for all his words and actions to benefit the long-term development of the Chinese nation.”
Why exactly do you think he said that? It couldn’t be nefarious or anti-American in motivation, could it?
This controversy has an unsettling Handmaid’s Tale quality — not because commercial surrogacy is identical to the novel’s system of forced reproduction, but because it raises the question of what happens when wealthy and powerful people can treat women’s reproductive capacity as a service to be purchased at scale.
Just like in The Handmaid’s Tale, a woman’s reproductive ability is currently being treated as a resource that is directed and controlled by others. A person from a wealthy class can commission this resource on a scale out of reach for the ordinary person seeking a surrogate. Surrogates (handmaidens) receive very little information, or none at all, about the intended parent or whether he has engaged multiple surrogates. The purpose of children is not family creation but continuing a legacy — in this case, in service to a foreign government.
Xu is hardly the only Chinese national participating in mass child surrogacy schemes. A couple was arrested in California last year because one of their children was a victim of child abuse, leading to their whole criminal enterprise coming down around their ears. Chinese nationals Guojun Xuan, 65, and Silvia Zhang, 38, had 21 children residing at their mansion, with five more being born via surrogates after their arrest.
CBS News, which did a deep-dive investigation, found 32 other surrogates who were carrying children for other foreign national single men with similar obscure motivations. Many were working with multiple surrogates, some with a dozen children in the making at a time. This is not a small problem, and it’s growing exponentially.
The federal government and individual states can clamp down on the surrogacy industry and help prevent birth tourism and Chinese exploitation.
At the state level, they can require surrogacy agencies to be licensed, and they can demand a limit on or ban all surrogacy requests from foreign nationals.
At the federal level, a bill was introduced last November seeking to alter laws surrounding surrogacy and Chinese exploitation. And it truly is exploitation: Emory University found that from 2014 to 2020, 41% of international parents who sought the services of American surrogates were from China.
Because SCOTUS has closed the door on a reasonable interpretation of the 14th Amendment, it’s up to Congress to pass a national surrogacy law. With Democrats firmly on the anchor-baby bandwagon, hopes aren’t high. We’ll see if anything gets through before the midterms, but I’m not holding my breath.
