“Mothers and children are treated as mere goods”

The Supreme Court has issued a ruling reiterating that surrogacy is prohibited in our country and that it strongly condemns agencies and contracts that benefit from this type of business: “Gestational surrogacy contracts violate the fundamental rights of both pregnant women. “And a woman and a pregnant child, and therefore, is clearly against our public order,” the Supreme Court recalled, as stated in other previous sentences. “The desire to have a human child, no matter how noble, can not be realized at the expense of other people’s rights. “A surrogate pregnancy contract involves the exploitation of women and the harm of the best interests of minors,” the magistrates said.

A civil court has heard the case of a child born to a surrogate mother in Mexico through the company ‘Mexico Surrogacy’ in 2015. The contract, which, among other things, obliged the biological mother of the child, did not have any kind of relationship with St. The child to renounce all the rights of the mother and to acknowledge that “she is not the legal, natural, legal or biological mother of the child”, by the way. The verdict in the case explains that the woman left for Mexico and signed a contract, and that the family – the lawsuit was filed by the woman’s father – subsequently launched a legal battle to have the child recognized as a mother in the civil registry. The genetic material came from an unknown donor.

The Madrid court agreed with them in the first instance. The judges ruled that the woman had a stable and well-paying job, met the educational and medical needs of a juvenile enrolled in the relevant cycle of early learning at the educational center, and considered the plaintiff as a mother and plaintiff and wife as grandparents. And grandchildren. ” Accordingly, a child could be registered as a son in the civil registry of a child.

The Supreme Court, at the request of the prosecutor’s office, rejects this possibility with a sentence that grossly accuses this type of agency and uterine rental contracts, but gives the family a solution: “Satisfying the best interests of the juvenile in this. The case leads to the fact that the recognition of the adopted kinship with the wishing mother must be obtained through adoption. ” Therefore, he understands that the solution is for a woman to adopt a child born in Mexico in 2015 through a surrogate mother through an agency.

From there begins the criticism that has already been made in similar cases in previous years. “The surrogacy contract seriously violates the fundamental rights enshrined in our constitution,” they say of both children and women. “Both the surrogate mother and the unborn child are treated as mere objects and not as people who have the dignity of their condition as human beings and the inherent fundamental rights of that dignity,” the Supreme Court criticized. At least, according to the signed agreement, “the decision on whether the surrogate mother should remain in the event of a life-threatening illness or injury is left to the director.”

Moreover, in most cases, women who submit to this type of contract in order to have a child who will be for another couple are members of an unfavorable strata, recalls the Supreme Court. “It does not take much imagination to get a full picture of the economic and social vulnerability of a woman who agrees to submit to this inhuman and degrading treatment that violates her most basic right to privacy. “Physical and moral integrity should be treated as a free and autonomous person with the dignity of every human being,” the judges said. And behind all this, he adds, stand the agencies that take advantage of this business, which, the Supreme Court condemns, “operate in our country without any delay, advertise their activities.”

They also target celebrities and individuals who use this system to advertise the birth of children. “There are often reports of celebrities announcing the replacement of a ‘child’ in Spain as a result of gestation, with the initiative of the competent juvenile protection administrations to make this protection effective. “Directors”, criticize the judges. The result, they condemn, is impunity: “A child born out of wedlock as a result of surrogacy, despite these legal and normal regulations, enters Spain without any problems and ends up integrated into the nucleus of a certain family for a long time.”

According to the Supreme Court, the rights of a child born to a surrogate mother system are also violated. “The future child, who is deprived of the right to knowledge of origin, is ‘reified’ because he is conceived as the object of the contract, which the surrogate mother is obliged to hand over to the director,” the judges said. But, nevertheless, they add that “reality is more difficult” and that is why they open the door to adoption. In any case, at the end of the sentence, he adds that women and children are considered in the surrogacy process as “simple goods and the suitability of principals for not even recognizing this type of minor as a parent’s authority is not certified. Pregnancy.