As Concerns Over Birth Tourism Schemes Grow, a Florida Senator Leads Legislation Against It

Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) is calling on Congress to enact his legislation that would prevent citizens of adversarial countries from hiring and exploiting American women to birth their children.

Scott introduced his SAFE KIDS Act, a moniker for Stopping Adversarial Foreign Exploitation of Kids In Domestic Surrogacy, last fall, but it failed to make a floor vote. He told The Epoch Times on Friday that, now more than ever, there needs to be limitations to automatic birthright citizenship in the United States.

“We always have to remember there’s a little baby boy or girl involved,” Scott said.

The SAFE KIDS Act would prohibit “citizens of foreign adversarial nations from entering into or enforcing surrogacy contracts in the United States,” according to the bill’s text.

Scott pointed to a handful of particular countries that would be barred from entering into such contracts, including China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea.

“Communist China tries to do everything they can to take advantage of us,” Scott said. “It’s sort of disgusting that there’s even a loophole like this, but some of our biggest enemies could send a growing sperm here and have a surrogate, have a baby, and then that’s an American citizen.”

The senator’s legislation would carry fines or up to a year imprisonment for any “surrogacy broker” who “knowingly or recklessly induces, arranges, procures, facilitates, or otherwise assists in the formation or execution of a surrogacy agreement.”

Although his SAFE KIDS Act did not pass in Congress’s last term, he said he’s optimistic it will pass in the next, citing a growing number of sponsors among Republican colleagues—but no Democratic lawmakers yet.

National Security Concerns

This first-of-its-kind legislation has become crucial to national security, Scott said, referencing recent judicial blocks to President Donald Trump’s efforts to restrict birthright citizenship.

The Supreme Court on June 30 invalidated Trump’s initial executive order to end it, and another judge blocked enforcement of a subsequent, narrowed directive.

“[Foreign nationals] don’t even have to come to this country to have an American kid,” Scott said about surrogacy. “How’s that not birth tourism?”

“These countries, they want to harm us, and we can put our heads in the sand, but the reality is, these countries are out to harm us.”

Citizens of adversarial nations can easily enter into surrogacy agreements with financially vulnerable American women and take the child back to their home country to raise it to hate America, Scott said, and “brought up to be a terrorist.”

Such a child, as a U.S. citizen, has a constitutional right to return to the United States at any time.

After the Supreme Court defeat, the Trump administration announced a Birth Tourism Prevention Task Force, aimed at disrupting global schemes to facilitate foreign nationals’ arrival to the United States for the purpose of having a child so it can receive automatic U.S. citizenship.

The task force has revoked hundreds of visas from individuals accused of participating in such schemes.

Florida Case

Although concerns of foreign adversaries exploiting American surrogates and birth tourism schemes are nationwide, Scott highlighted a case that is close to home for him out of St. Augustine, Florida.

Kyla Simpson gave birth to triplets in June 2025 for a single Chinese man who resides in Jiangsu Province, China.

A few months after the birth, one of the babies died from an undisclosed medical reason.

As part of the contract, entered into in Nov. 2024 in Los Angeles, the parties agreed that the Chinese man, Chen Zhou, would be the children’s sole legal father.

After their birth, Zhou is accused of abandoning the children, Simpson’s attorney, Sen. Scott, and Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier have alleged, adding that he has never set foot in the United States, which The Epoch Times could not verify.

About a year after the children’s birth, court filings show the father submitted on June 9 an emergency petition to the St. John’s County Court, where St. Augustine is located, asking a judge to enforce the surrogacy contract.

A judge granted an emergency pick-up for Zhou about a week later.

“What happened to Kyla Simpson, and you just see the disgusting aspect of this,” Scott said. “This guy wouldn’t come here and pick them up, and after she raised them, and when they went through the health issues, she’s the one who took care of them, and then she has to give them up, so it sort of makes no sense.”

Uthmeier had submitted a court filing on July 17 in support of Simpson, asking a judge to block the children from being removed from Florida, which was granted days later.

But by then it was too late.

The young children were whisked away to California following the emergency pick-up order and have lived there with the father’s representatives since. The children were moved again in August to an unspecified address and placed with a different, unnamed caretaker, according to court filings.

Simpson is seeking to have the roughly year-and-a-half-old toddlers returned to her in St. Augustine.

Court filings submitted by the biological father in China said Simpson has no custodial rights regarding the surrogacy agreement she signed and claims she is not biologically related to the children. There was no mention found in court documents about who the biological mother would be.

A filing from Simpson and her legal team read that Florida’s official birth certificates for the children list her as their mother, and that “she stands ready to care for them.”

At the core of this complex and international case, Scott said, are the innocent young boys, who he said would be better suited to live with the mother who birthed and raised them as opposed to the Chinese father.

For now, the children appear to still be in California.

Florida’s Fifth District Court of Appeals agreed on Sept. 10 to take up Simpson’s request for an appeal.

“[The children are] in California, but the case is continuing,” Scott said. “[The decision] has given Kyla Simpson some hope that she’ll be able to retain the children.”