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Celebrities like Kim Kardashian and Chrissy Teigen have both praised their experiences with surrogates - who carry children for people with fertility issues and same-sex couples - as a “gift.” Actress Olivia Munn and husband John Mulaney announced Monday that they had welcomed their second child using a surrogate after she battled breast cancer last year.
Surrogacy can come with a hefty price tag, running into tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars, but regardless the industry is booming.
However, new research published Tuesday revealed challenges in the process. Researchers said women who become gestational carriers for others may have a higher risk of severe complications during pregnancy than those who conceive using other methods.
They have a higher risk of high blood pressure during their pregnancy, hemorrhaging after birth, and having their baby born preterm.
While the authors did not answer why this risk could be higher, recent research out of Harvard University has suggested that the cause could be because the embryo is genetically unrelated to its carrier.
There are two types of surrogates, traditional and gestational. A traditional surrogate uses her own egg, meaning she is the biological mother of the baby she carries, but some states have laws against this method. In gestational surrogacy, an egg from a donor or intended mother is used.
In the US, the number of gestational carriers increased from just over 700 in 1999 to more than 3,400 in 2023. Between 1999 and 2013, 18,400 infants were born as the result of gestational carrier cycles.
“The study was prompted by an increased in the use of gestational carriers worldwide and a lack of information about the impact of this reproductive modality on pregnancy outcomes, for the gestational carrier and the offspring,” lead author Dr Maria Velez said.
The study was conducted by the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences, where Velez is an adjunct scientist, and Canada’s Queen’s University and published in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine.
To reach these conclusions, the team used data from more than 800,000 births in Ontario over nearly a decade.
Of those, just 806 were conceived using gestational carriers. They assessed disorders and analyzed unexpected outcomes of labor resulting in long-term and short-term consequences for those giving births and babies.
The authors said future research could help fill in gaps in knowledge on other factors that could impact the health outcomes of the carrier or the baby.
“There are guidelines about the eligibility criteria to minimize the risk of pregnancy complications among gestational carriers,” Velez noted. “However, these guidelines are not always strictly followed.”
