Georgia

Legal status

Georgia was an early adopter of commercial surrogacy, grounded in the 1997 Law on Health Care (Articles 141, 143, 144) and civil-registration rules. It is open to married heterosexual couples (including de-facto couples who can prove ≥1 year of cohabitation), and foreigners enjoy the same terms as citizens.

Georgia's key advantage is stable parentage: courts can issue a pre-birth parentage order, the birth certificate lists the intended parents (no mention of the surrogate), and parents can usually leave with the child within days of delivery.

The 2023 "ban for foreigners" episode

In June 2023 the then-PM announced a plan to ban foreign commercial surrogacy, intended to take effect 1 January 2024, citing trafficking and exploitation concerns. The bill failed its third reading and was withdrawn in early 2024; as of July 2026 no new law is in force and no new bill is before parliament.

Note that Chinese-language agency channels circulate contradictory claims about the ban ("in force since Jan 2024", "banned from Jan 2025") — none of which is accurate, since the bill never took effect. Clinic-published articles asserting surrogacy is "still legal, still safe" are interested-party content; rely on legal and media sources instead.

Note: policy is uncertain. A tightening has been attempted before and could recur — intended parents should monitor legal developments.

Eligibility

| Group | Surrogacy allowed | | --- | --- | | Married heterosexual couples | Yes | | Single individuals | No (IVF/IUI allowed) | | Same-sex couples | No (explicitly excluded) |

Eligibility paperwork across clinics (verified 2026-07)

We checked how 18 active providers publicly state their requirements for marriage certificates, de-facto partnerships, medical-infertility proof and single/same-sex clients (fetched 2026-07-08), cross-referenced against four official legal sources. Three takeaways:

1. Statute and practice are two different layers. The Law on Health Care itself says only "couple" plus written consent, and its literal medical indication is "if a woman does not have a uterus"; the familiar "married, or de-facto partners with 1+ year of cohabitation" comes from the Ministry of Justice birth-registration decree (No. 18, 2012) and notarial practice — not from statute. Looser clinic claims ("no marriage certificate needed", "no medical indication required") live in that gap: acceptance at intake does not guarantee smooth birth registration.
2. No legal source and no clinic website imposes a validity window on the certificate itself (e.g. "issued within one year") — every sourced "1 year" refers to relationship duration. Chachava's such requirement is field-verified by Repro Society (July 2026) — a clinic-imposed bar stricter than the law; always ask for the written document list.
3. Disclosure completeness is itself a transparency signal. Fullest disclosure: Be Parent and SILK Medical. Zero disclosure includes the high-traffic names Chachava and GGRC, plus LeaderMed, Innova, Happy Family — requirements can only be learned on site and may vary by staff member.

Highlights: SILK/Stork explicitly reject singles and redirect to Armenia; ReproART is stricter than the norm (married for at least one year); New Life's pages contradict each other; EFC's Russian page claims no medical indication is required (a risk point); Chachava and GGRC publish nothing on their websites — but Repro Society has field-verified (July 2026) that Chachava requires a marriage certificate issued within one year plus a medical-infertility letter and accepts married couples only, while GGRC accepts a cohabitation certificate in place of a marriage certificate. These are on-site policies stricter (Chachava) or more flexible (GGRC) than anything published. Universal points: apostille + certified Georgian translation for foreign documents (start 3–4 months early); the notarised surrogacy contract must be signed before embryo transfer — the only statutory time anchor.

Key risks (please read)

Georgia's surrogacy sector has seen serious scandals recently, reflecting a regulatory vacuum and weak protection of surrogates:

• Kinderly fraud case (decided): on 30 June 2026 Tbilisi City Court sentenced both founders to 10 years each (one in absentia) for group embezzlement of over GEL 2.06 million (~$780k); 40 victims, including 30 surrogates and 10 intended parents, many of them Chinese citizens. Surrogates had earlier been left unpaid and housed in unheated hostels. Women's-rights group Sapari argues the case should have been prosecuted as trafficking.
• BabyCam forced egg-harvesting / trafficking (under investigation): a Chinese-run operation lured Thai women with fake job ads, confiscated passports and harvested eggs; 3 were rescued in January 2025 via international cooperation. A six-month NYT investigation (December 2025) concluded the most credible reading is that eggs were harvested without consent. No public indictment found as of mid-2026 (pending verification).
• Several surrogates were officially recognized as trafficking victims (from May 2025).
• The regulatory vacuum is an official NGO finding: Social Justice Center (December 2025) — no dedicated assisted-reproduction law, no agency licensing, no unified registry, no binding clinical guidelines, and unregulated surrogacy contracts.

2025–2026 timeline

| Date | Event | | --- | --- | | Jan 2025 | BabyCam case: 3 Thai women rescued; trafficking investigation opened | | Apr 2025 | Kinderly investigation opens after media exposure; surrogates left in derelict hostels | | May 2025 | Several surrogates granted trafficking-victim status | | Oct 2025 | Kinderly founder Melikyan arrested | | Dec 2025 | NYT "egg farm" investigation published; Social Justice Center declares regulatory vacuum | | Mar 2026 | Academic study: Ukrainian war refugees form the surrogacy workforce backbone | | Jun 2026 | Kinderly founders sentenced to 10 years each |

Two structural caveats for planners: first, Georgian providers have an extremely thin footprint on international review platforms (none of the 24 reviewed here has a Trustpilot page) — "high ratings" mostly come from referral platforms or provider-controlled channels. Second, verdicts and investigations receive near-zero coverage in Chinese-language channels, where some agencies still market under convicted brands — a substantial information lag.

All facts are cited (see "Sources"). Law and prices can change; rely on the verification date. This page is not medical or legal advice.