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Renee and her husband had endured a decade of exhausting efforts to start a family, including multiple fruitless treatments and medical issues that seemed to make pregnancy impossible.

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Then this April the Toronto couple’s ordeal seemed finally to be heading for a happy ending. An American agency had found a surrogate mother in the States to carry their longed-for baby, and the surrogate even visited the would-be parents in Toronto.

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Four months later, Donald Trump in effect put an end to the arrangement.

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The president was actually pursuing his goal of limiting so-called birthright citizenship. He issued an executive order that included a section barring American officials from issuing passports to babies carried by U.S. surrogates for international clients.

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Such documents are crucial to foreign “intended parents” taking their newborns home and without them travel would be more complicated and time-consuming, experts in the field say. There are also fears the parents themselves could be refused entry to the U.S. under another executive order. As a result, some of the American surrogacy agencies suspended their international business altogether.

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The company Renee and her husband used refunded the hefty fee they had paid – even though the firm was “very out of pocket” – and left them to start all over again.

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“It’s certainly been a setback,” said the 44-year-old lawyer, who asked that her full name be withheld for privacy reasons. ”While it’s disappointing, we have quite a bit of practice in accepting bad news.”

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The couple are not alone. The head of one prominent Canadian surrogacy agency says over 100 intended parents from Canada and other countries have contacted her in the last few weeks after the White House edict indirectly quashed their U.S. arrangements.

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The agencies in many cases refunded fees that typically run over $200,000, said Sally Rhoads-Heinrich of Surrogacy in Canada Online. A judge recently issued an injunction halting the White House measures, but an appeal seems likely. Coupled with some states banning international surrogacy in part or entirely, the development could deliver a sharp blow to the U.S. business – and the foreigners who use it, said Rhoads-Heinrich.

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“If you look on any of the U.S. (online surrogacy) professionals groups, they’re scared,” Rhoads-Heinrich said. “They’re saying it could be the collapse of the U.S. surrogacy industry because there are a lot of agencies that are primarily helping internationals.”

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Close to a third of surrogate arrangements in the States involve out-of-country parents, according to a 2024 study from Georgia’s Emory University.