Two women sign a contract in Tabasco, Gulf of Mexico. One was called a “future mother” and the other a “surrogate pregnant woman”; The contract stipulates that the second became a uterus hired in the service of the first. Seven years later, the Spanish Supreme Court ruled on the future of a child born under the contract and who has lived in Spain ever since: he or she cannot be registered as a “future mother” in the civil registry. , But he can be adopted.
The offer includes clauses in the contract, in this case through a company formed through Mexico Surrogacy, which rarely sees the light of day: an agreement that obliges a pregnant woman to never try to have sex with a child, to agree not to have sex and to pass. Random medical tests and even give life to those who paid if, for example, he would become dead in the brain. He decides whether to die or stay alive until the fetus is viable.
These points lead the Supreme Court to understand that this agreement deprives both the pregnant woman and the newborn of their rights. The woman, who signs, explains, agrees to submit to “inhuman and degrading treatment, which violates her most fundamental rights to privacy, physical and moral integrity, is considered a free and autonomous person, endowed with the dignity of every human being.” “It all happened in Tabasco, Mexico City, which in 2017, according to El País, had” entire neighborhoods “where women had children for” foreigners “until the executive imposed restrictions on the rented uterus.
Judges also make no secret of the fact that women who agree to these terms have no choice. “It does not take much imaginative effort to get a full picture of the economic and social vulnerability of a woman who takes it upon herself,” the judges said.
Surrogacy is banned in Spain. Article 10 of the Law on Promoting Techniques, signed in 2006, leaves little room for interpretation: Maternal ownership in favor. “Contracting or third party,” he said. The second verse also says about the childbearing of children born to a surrogate mother: “It will be determined by childbirth,” he adds. The biological father, in addition, has the right to claim paternity.
Families who decide to apply for this technique through an agency or contract so do so in countries where it is allowed and then take the children to Spain, thereby enhancing the legal battle over their ownership and nationality. Some are registered directly with the consulate. By the time the case is finally ready for sentencing, the children affected by this situation are already more than five years old and the judges have to make a decision. The Supreme Court explains: “A child born abroad as a result of replacement gestation, 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.”
In the case of this child born in surrogacy in Mexico, the judges refuse to register him in the civil registry, but advise him to start the adoption process. “The way in which adoption is to be determined is through adoption,” the proposal reads.
This ruling of the Supreme Court reveals what judges think about surrogacy. Women and children are treated as “simple goods,” the judges say. This type of contract, moreover, “violates the fundamental rights of both the pregnant woman and the pregnant child and, consequently, is clearly contrary to our public order.” The Supreme Court says the desire to have a child, no matter how noble, cannot be realized at the expense of other people’s rights. A surrogacy contract exploits a woman and harms her best interests. A minor. “
This is not the only complaint of the Supreme Court. Civil court magistrates explain that while the ban is obvious, it is also realistic to impunity for agencies that make money on rent. These agencies, the Supreme Court condemns, “operate and advertise their activities in our country without any delay”, despite the fact that the law on general advertising prohibits the promotion “which endangers the dignity of the individual.” In face-to-face markets that advertise uterine rentals and even, the Supreme Court recalls, “there are frequent reports of celebrities claiming that a ‘baby’ is brought to Spain as a result of pregnancy without replacement. Competent juvenile protection administrations take any initiative. ”
Because the Supreme Court’s presumed interest of a minor in registering in the civil registry does not comply with all the rights of a child that remain unfulfilled: the payer’s suitability is not even checked, the judges reprimand him. The prosecution adds another rebuke in this case: the child is barred from knowing who his or her biological father and mother are, as recognized by the 2006 law. The Spanish Bioethics Committee, an independent body, considers it inappropriate that there is such a clear regulation, but at the same time, “in practice, there are no obstacles to recognizing the result of gestation through commercial substitution, which violates the most basic rights of a surrogate mother and child.” “A place abroad,” the Supreme Court recalled.
There is no juvenile interest in judges in Cart Blanc in this type of process. In 2014, judges ruled on the surrogacy case, declaring: “It is impossible to protect minors by uncritically accepting the results of the surrogacy agreement.” And they hypothesized that accepting this argument would lead to the fact that people from “developed countries, in good economic conditions” would be able to keep a child from “a broken family or a troubled environment in poor places.”
There are no official public data on how many children are registered in Spain from surrogate mothers. Various media outlets, such as El País and ABC, obtained the data through answers to parliamentary questions and polls on the Transparency Portal: Spain received 948 registrations at consular offices and diplomatic missions in 2010-2017 and another 1,410 in 2017-2020. From 2010 to 2016, most of these children were from other countries, including the United States (553), Ukraine (231), India (97), and Mexico (51).
Source: El Diario
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