A longread in @smh on #ukranian #commercial #surrogacy as the war breaks. (Not altruistic surrogacy, let's get that out of the way at the start.) smh.com.au π§΅
First of all, zero mention of #donorconception, which perhaps confuses the ethics here and allows the commissioning parents to be painted as just wanting their 'own' child. But. There is also zero mention of the rights of the child. #childrensrights
At one point, the surrogacy agency actually says they can't forcibly take a Ukranian surrogate across the border to safety against her will because that would be 'human trafficking'. Interesting phrase to use in a business which sells children. #surrogacy
That's not my take, btw. That's the words of the @UN Special Rapporteur Maud de Bker-Buquicchio, speaking about the practice of commercial #surrogacy.
*Boer-Buquicchio, apologies.
Children have a right not to be bought or sold. They also have a right to identity, which the UN's Committee on the Rights of the Child has taken to mean biological parents, ie donors of egg, sperm and embryos.
I'm not going to get into the fascinating exchange of cells that occurs during nine months of a pregnancy, but the right to know your birth mother seems fairly key to ones notion of the right to family and identity, as last out in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
You don't get that with surrogacy. As evidenced by this article. Some commissioning parents simply want to pay their money to a woman from a poor country in a war zone and have no contact.
This article also mentions the countries and jurisdictions that have legalised commercial surrogacy. However, it does not quantify this information.
The fact is, countries that allow commercial surrogacy to take place within their own borders - ie, to their own women, and not simply overlooking it happening to poor women somewhere else who are not their responsibility - are definitely in the minority. They are a handful.
Calls to legalise commercial surrogacy in wealthy Western countries present it as a given, something that lawmakers will see sense and recognise. No. It is the anomaly, not the norm. And less wealthy countries that allowed it have banned it after atrocious #humanrights scandals.
The fact that this article raises several instances of surrogates chances of fleeing the war in Ukraine to Poland, being dictated by their surrogacy agency, by the commissioning parents, or by of their contractual obligations, is deeply disturbing.
Likewise a commercial surrogate being moved to a relative place of safety in Ukraine because of the baby she's being paid to carry, while her *own children* remain in an area of conflict.
'When she spoke to her children, she sometimes heard the bone-chilling sound of explosions in the background, so loud that Nataliia, seated beside her, could hear it, too. βMummy,β one of Marynaβs daughters once cried into the phone, βget us out of here!β'
I note that although this article namechecks Spain and surrogacy - it does not mention the recent groundbreaking decision by the Spanish High Court. Which found that commercial surrogacy constitutes exploitation. Of both the surrogate and the child. bioedge.org.
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