By Malliavin Nzamurambaho
Rwanda’s Law n° 026/2025 on healthcare services marks a historic moment. For the first time, the country has formally legalized surrogacy while banning commercial arrangements.
On paper, this is a major step forward in reproductive health policy. It gives legal recognition to assisted reproduction and offers hope to couples and individuals who cannot conceive naturally.
But beneath the legal progress lies a difficult question: Who will actually benefit from this law and at what cost to equality and dignity?
A law that opens doors but not for everyone
Surrogacy means a woman carries a pregnancy for someone else who will raise the child after birth.
Rwanda’s law allows this arrangement only under strict conditions. It bans payment beyond medical costs and limits eligibility mainly to people diagnosed with infertility.
This approach is meant to protect women from exploitation. That intention is important and understandable.
But in practice, the law raises a deeper concern: access to surrogacy may now depend more on wealth than on need.
Even without “commercial payment,” the costs of fertility treatment, medical care, transport, and related expenses remain very high. This means that only financially strong individuals are realistically able to use surrogacy services.
The result is a quiet inequality:
some people can access parenthood through science, while others cannot even when both are medically eligible.
The hidden risk: economic pressure on women
The law also restricts who can become a surrogate mother. Women must be between 21 and 40, healthy, and must have already given birth without complications.
These safeguards are meant to protect health and safety. But they do not fully answer a key concern: What happens when poverty influences a woman’s “choice”?
A woman may agree to become a surrogate not because she is free, but because she is economically vulnerable. Legally, this is not coercion. But socially, it may still be pressure. This is where law and reality can diverge.
As feminist legal theory shows, a choice made under economic hardship is not always a fully free choice. And without strong safeguards independent legal advice, counselling, and clear compensation rules women may remain exposed to subtle forms of exploitation.
Gaps in the law that matter in real life
The law leaves several important questions unanswered:
- What happens if the child is born with serious health complications?
- Who takes responsibility if the surrogate mother dies or is seriously injured?
- What happens if the intended parents refuse the child?
- What exactly counts as “cost coverage”?
These are not theoretical problems. They are real-life situations that other countries have struggled with. Without clear answers, disputes may end up in courts or worse, leave women and children without protection.
Equality under Rwanda’s Constitution
Rwanda’s Constitution is clear: all citizens are equal before the law. It also prohibits discrimination, including based on social or economic status.
This means laws must not only be fair in wording; they must also be fair in outcome. The concern with the surrogacy law is not its intention, but its practical effect.
If only wealthy people can access surrogacy, and only poorer women become surrogates, then a new kind of inequality emerges—one based on reproductive opportunity.
This is not direct discrimination. But it may still be indirect inequality, which constitutional law also takes seriously.
Learning from other countries
Other countries offer important lessons:
- India once had a booming commercial surrogacy industry but restricted it after concerns about exploitation of poor women.
- South Africa uses court supervision and allows compensation within regulated limits, while also protecting equality rights, including for same-sex couples.
- Kenya and Ghana still struggle with unclear laws, leaving women vulnerable in informal arrangements.
Rwanda sits somewhere in the middle: more structured than some countries, but still missing strong safeguards seen in more developed systems.
The real policy challenge
This is not an argument against surrogacy. It is an argument about how to make it fair, safe, and truly accessible.
A modern surrogacy law should answer three questions clearly:
- How do we protect women from economic pressure?
- How do we ensure children are fully protected in all scenarios?
- How do we make access fair, not just legal?
Without these answers, the system risks becoming one where reproduction is shaped by income, and where women’s bodies carry risks that are not fully recognized in law.
A careful step forward
Rwanda’s surrogacy law is a milestone. It shows a country willing to engage with complex ethical and medical realities.
But legislation is only the first step. Implementation will determine whether this law becomes a tool of justice or a system that unintentionally deepens inequality. The goal should not only be to regulate surrogacy.
It should be to ensure that every child, every woman, and every family is treated with dignity and equal protection under the law. Because when it comes to bringing life into the world, fairness should never be optional.
End.
