An Open Letter to Ireland's Political and NGO Class

Surrogacy Is Not ‘Gay Rights’: Stop Exploiting Women in Our Name

June 2025

In direct response to recent commentary from yet another elected politician, published in the Dublin Gazette,  wherein he called for the implementation of the Health (Assisted Human Reproduction) Act 2024, and implied that blocking international surrogacy would somehow discriminate against same-sex couples.

As lesbian, gay, and bisexual individuals, we write with outrage at the ongoing exploitation of gay rights rhetoric to launder the commercialisation of human reproduction. This Pride Month, while politicians and NGO elites drape themselves in flags and bask in rainbow wrapped virtue-signaling, they are actively endorsing policies that deepen global inequality, commodify the bodies of impoverished or vulnerable women, and treat children as luxury goods for the wealthy. .

We refer specifically to the public fanfare and celebration surrounding the passage of the legalisation of both domestic and international, particularly how is has been dishonestly framed as a victory for ‘LGBTQ+’ rights. It is no such thing. It is a victory for the fertility industry, for wealthy commissioning adults, and for a political class that would rather outsource reproductive labour to desperate women in the Global South, or in war torn Ukraine, than face uncomfortable truths about exploitation, class, and coercion.

Let us be absolutely clear: No woman, regardless of her nationality, wealth, or lack thereof, should be used as a reproductive vessel simply because no woman in Ireland would do it for free. No couple, regardless of their sexuality, has a moral or legal right to commission a child from a woman enduring war, famine, disaster, or poverty. That is not justice. That is reproductive capitalism built on colonial logic. It is utterly shameful. 

Ireland's political class has spent years attempting to erase the words "woman" and "mother" from law, healthcare, and even the Constitution. But when it's time to legalise treating women’s bodies as a rental service and the sale of their babies? Suddenly, everyone remembers exactly who the women are. Suddenly, motherhood matters again, so long as it can be sold, packaged, and exported. This is not equality. This is a rebranding of Ireland’s darkest past. We are witnessing the Mother and Baby Homes 2.0; this time not run by nuns, but by clinics, lawyers and lobbyists. Not to the U.S., but to well-connected Irish and European elites.

We know the truth about surrogacy. The Irish media has consistently highlighted cases involving former senators who have publicly admitted to pulling "diplomatic strings" to secure children from countries that have since banned international surrogacy due to exploitation. We’ve seen media personalities equate criticism of surrogacy with homophobia, and high-profile stories of outsourcing to Ukrainian women during wartime. Others have spoken of their own painful experiences with infertility or trauma to their reproductive health. We do not deny the heartbreak of being unable to carry a child. We truly understand and empathise with that grief. But grief, infertility, or the simple fact we are in a same-sex relationship, does not entitle any of us to turn another woman into a vessel or to use that as an excuse to wipe a child’s birth mother from the child’s legal documents. 

Still, we see the same politicians and lobbyists hide behind ‘LGBTQ+ rights’’ to shield themselves from scrutiny. They claim that denying surrogacy is denying gay men the right to a family. This is intellectually dishonest and manipulative. Only about one-third of those using surrogacy are gay couples. The majority are heterosexual. Framing reproductive exploitation as a "gay issue" is not only a cynical strategy to silence criticism that effectively brands anyone who objects as homophobic or even ‘far-right’, but it paints gay men as entitled to the bodies and labour of poor women. Most gay men build families through adoption, fostering, co-parenting and kinship care - routes that respect both women and children. But those pathways don’t make anyone rich. And those options of same-sex family building are undermined and those families delegitimised, every single time an elected official claims the commercialisation of women’s reproductive function is the ‘only way gay couples can have a family’. 

Even so-called "altruistic" surrogacy is soaked in coercion. Women are emotionally pressured  by friends, by family and by social norms to “help” gay men have children. They are told they’re selfish if they refuse. They’re reminded how happy they were to become mothers. They’re guilted into sacrificing their bodies, every time they are told by the political and media class that it is ‘anti-gay’ or ‘homophobic’ to disagree with surrogacy as a whole. This isn’t empowerment. It’s manipulation. It’s exploitation dressed up as ‘love and solidarity’. 

And let us ask this: if surrogacy is such a noble and altruistic act, where are the wealthy politicians, the NGO executives, the celebrity allies lining up to offer their own wombs in an act of solidarity and ‘queer allyship’? Why are none of the rainbow-clad elites volunteering to gestate children for gay men? Why are they calling on women in Kenya, Ukraine, Colombia, and India (countries where being gay is criminalised or socially frowned upon) to do the work they wouldn’t dream of doing themselves? If they love to preach solidarity and allyship, where is theirs?

This is not equality. This is about a growing market. A billion-euro global trade in babies and reproductive labour, built on the desperation of women and the entitlement of those with money or status.

We’ve had enough. We are same-sex attracted. We are proud. But we refuse to be used as props to prop up a violent, misogynistic industry. Stop using our sexualities as both a shield and a sword to justify your greed. Stop dressing up exploitation as progress.

Not in our name.

Signed,

Annaïg Birdy, (lesbian) Not All Gays

Seán Atkinson, (gay) Not All Gays

Eoghan Russell, (gay) Not All Gays

Kaitlin M, (bisexual) Not All Gays

Monica, (bisexual) Not All Gays

Laura R, (bisexual) Psychology & Philosophy Student

Tim Churchill, (gay) SEN Teacher

Joshua G, (gay) Service Manager

David Stickland, (gay) President of KCL Free Speech Society

Robert Jessel, (bisexual) Writer and Campaigner

Jo Bartosch, (bisexual) Journalist and Author

Aja The Empress, (lesbian) Women’s & LGB Rights Advocate

Sarah M (lesbian)

Amylia Fields (bisexual)