SAFE KIDS Act

Key Points

• Congress introduced a bill to stop citizens from 'adversarial' countries—such as China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea—from hiring American women to act as surrogates. The goal is to prevent these foreign nationals from using U.S. laws to have children here and then take them back to their home countries.
• The policy would make any surrogacy contract involving a citizen from these specific countries void and impossible to enforce. This means the surrogate mother would not be legally bound to hand over the baby, and the foreign parents would have no legal rights under the contract.
• If a child is born under one of these banned agreements, a local judge would decide who gets custody based on the child's best interests. The court would completely ignore the original surrogacy deal when making this decision.
• Surrogacy brokers or companies that help arrange these illegal deals could face criminal charges. They could be sentenced to up to one year in prison and be forced to pay federal fines for knowingly facilitating the contracts.
• The bill includes an exception for families where at least one parent is a U.S. citizen or a legal permanent resident. If a foreign citizen is married to an American, they would still be allowed to enter into a surrogacy agreement together.

Impact Analysis

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