Tennessee representative announces bill to ban forced abortions in surrogacy contracts
The proposal would protect surrogate mothers from losing compensation or facing enforcement actions for refusing an intended parent’s demand to abort an unborn child. CatholicVote CEO and President Kelsey Reinhardt said the proposal would protect vulnerable women and unborn children from being treated “as a means to an end.”
Rep. Andy Ogles, R-Tenn., announced July 23 that he is introducing legislation barring federal courts from enforcing surrogacy contract provisions that force surrogate mothers to undergo abortions.
According to a press release from Ogles’ office, the Preventing Forced Abortions Act of 2026 would also require that courts enforce the surrogate mother’s right to receive any agreed-upon compensation despite her refusal to abort the unborn child.
“No woman should ever be forced to murder a child because of a provision buried in a contract,” Ogles said in a July 22 X post promoting the measure. “My Preventing Forced Abortions Act ensures that federal courts cannot enforce these coercive clauses or allow intended parents to withhold promised compensation when a surrogate mother chooses life.”
In a follow-up post, Ogles thanked the bill’s co-sponsors: Republican Reps. Sheri Biggs of South Carolina, Lauren Boebert of Colorado, Mary Miller of Illinois, Josh Brecheen of Oklahoma, and Keith Self of Texas.
Several pro-life groups have endorsed the proposal, including CatholicVote, Student B. Anthony Pro-Life, the National Right to Life Committee, Concerned Women for America, and Students for Life Action.
CatholicVote CEO and President Kelsey Reinhardt thanked Ogles for “standing up for both women and the unborn” in the release.
“Every abortion treats the woman and child as a means to an end, violating her inherent dignity, and exploits the woman for an agenda of death. Too often the abortion compounds injustice: many coerced cases involve domestic abuse, trafficking, economic threats, or authoritarian policies,” Reinhardt said. “The Catholic Church’s social teaching prioritizes protecting the vulnerable from such manipulation. CatholicVote supports the Preventing Forced Abortions Act and encourages all Members of Congress to do the same.”
Ogles introduced an earlier version of the measure in July 2024, but it did not advance out of the House.
His latest proposed measure comes amid several public disputes in which surrogate mothers said intended parents pressured them to abort because of a child’s sex or possible disability, an illness affecting the surrogate, or a change in the intended parents’ circumstances.
Surrogacy law varies by state, and the U.S. has no comprehensive federal law governing the practice. Genetic, or sometimes called traditional, surrogacy involves a woman conceiving a child using her own egg, while gestational surrogacy involves an embryo created using an egg from another woman.
In a July 21 report detailing the proposal, Breitbart called the surrogacy industry in America “the unregulated wild west, where single adults and straight and gay couples can contract with a woman and pay her large sums of money to carry and give birth to a child.” The outlet pointed to multiple cases where surrogate mothers were sued by intended parents or reported suffering extreme distress after refusing to undergo an abortion.
Ogles’ proposal also follows a high-profile dispute in Ontario, Canada, in which a same-sex couple said they were suing the woman who carried their son after she refused their request to abort him two years earlier, as Zeale News previously reported. The intended parents had requested the abortion in July 2024 after prenatal testing indicated that the child might have a cleft lip. The woman went on to deliver the baby, and the two men took him home after his birth.
