Rep. Scott Perry, Pennsylvania Republican, introduced two bills aimed at closing what he calls a glaring legal loophole that leaves surrogate-born children vulnerable to predators and foreign exploitation across most of the U.S.
The Protecting Kids from Creeps Act and the Preventing International Surrogacy Exploitation Act, Mr. Perry says, focus on the problem that most states, including Pennsylvania, have no laws prohibiting sex offenders from obtaining children through surrogacy.
There also is no agreement among states, meaning even in the few states that bar it, offenders can simply cross state lines.
The Protecting Kids from Creeps Act (HR 9131) would require surrogacy agencies to conduct criminal background checks and impose significant penalties — up to 10 years for negligence and 20 years for willful violations — along with loss of federal funding for non-compliant agencies.
The impetus for the legislation stemmed from a Pennsylvania case when a Tier 1 registered sex offender, a former teacher arrested in 2016 for soliciting a 16-year-old student with over 12,000 explicit text messages, obtained a baby through surrogacy with his husband.
The agency performed no background check, and the offender did not disclose his sex offender status. The couple later posted a GoFundMe without disclosing his criminal history.
“What this legislation does, the Protecting Kids from Creeps act, it compels surrogate agencies to increase screening standards and protect children from these pedophiles and these predators,” Mr. Perry said.
“It imposes civil and criminal penalties on the agencies themselves and the people that operate them as well as the pedophile who has tried to obtain a child through surrogacy.”
Mr. Perry also introduced the Preventing International Surrogacy Exploitation Act (HR 9132), which addresses what Mr. Perry called “birth tourism,” primarily involving wealthy foreign nationals — particularly from China — using U.S. surrogacy agencies to obtain citizenship through American-citizen children.
The bill would ban international commercial surrogacy while exempting couples where at least one partner is a U.S. citizen or legal permanent resident.
“What provoked this legislation? We have learned through many testimonies that surrogacy process is being exploited by wealthy foreigners who then get the benefit of an American citizen that can later provide dual citizenship for the foreign parent,” Mr. Perry said.
“But it’s worse than that. There’s a Chinese billionaire who had 20 children through a U.S.-based surrogacy in the last couple years.”
One man, who calls himself “China’s first father,” reportedly has over 100 U.S.-born children, he added.
Another executive allegedly used American egg donors to conceive girls he intended to marry off to powerful men. A California agency owner described filling an order for yet another client seeking 100 children, who had the babies raised entirely by nannies without ever meeting them.
Both pieces of legislation had about 12 co-sponsors after each was initially introduced on Thursday. Mr. Perry expects to garner more, as his bill circulates around the Republican conference.
Mr. Perry introduced this bill around the same time the Supreme Court is about to decide on President Trump’s birthright citizenship case, but said his reason for the legislation has nothing to do with the court case.
Mr. Trump previously told The Washington Times he expects the high court to rule against his executive order, which restricts children born here to both migrants and temporary legal visitors, would be “a disaster economically for our country.”
“You’ll have 25% of the people coming into our country coming in through birthright citizenship, and we won’t have any control. This decision by the Supreme Court is a very big one. They’ll probably rule against me because they seem to like doing that,” the president said.
The president said that the amendment, crafted and ratified after the Civil War, was “about the babies of slaves” and never envisioned “Chinese billionaires” coming to the U.S. to give birth.
He said the U.S. is “a laughingstock” for its generous policy.
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