argia.eus
INPRIMATU
The Supreme Court of Spain considers that surrogate pregnancy violates the rights of the child and mother
  • On a surrogate pregnancy contract which has been brought before the courts, the Supreme Court has again ruled on the surrogacy of pregnancy. He said that "harm to the best interests of the child and the exploitation of women" involving contracts such as this are unacceptable.
ARGIA @argia 2022ko apirilaren 06a

Surrogate pregnancy is not legal in the Spanish state, as subrogation contracts are "void acts of full right, contrary to Spanish public order, which violate the fundamental rights of women and children", according to the Supreme Court in 2013. However, in a recent ruling, he stressed that, although it is not a legal action, the agencies that mediate between the people or families who want to buy the baby and the woman who will raise it in the stomach are freely advertised in the Spanish State. Conclusion: "The child born abroad as a result of a commercial surrogate pregnancy enters Spain and ends de facto integrated in a stable family nucleus," he added. That is, even though the purchase and sale of the baby is made in countries where surrogate gestation is legal, some of these children will grow up and live in countries where surrogate gestation is not legal. And that can bring with it a lot of questions.

In one of these cases, the Spanish Supreme Court has again pronounced itself on this issue, as on Tuesday it issued a judgment on a surrogate pregnancy contract which came to court. The contract is between the Mexican mother who gave birth and the Spanish family that bought the baby, and a previous sentence recognized the maternity affiliation to the Spanish family. In the face of this ruling, the Public Prosecutor filed an appeal that the Supreme issued last Tuesday, considering that "the harm to the best interests of the child and the exploitation of women are unacceptable".

Despite these statements, the court has left open the doors to the possibility that the non-biological mother can welcome the child, as they live together. "This decision, as the Supreme has specified, responds to the satisfaction of the best interests of the child, as demanded by the European Court of Human Rights," can be read in the Newspaper. The judgment, however, does allow for a strict ruling on the situation of surrogate gestation. In addition to contracts such as this harm the best interests of minors and exploit women, he has stressed that surrogate pregnancy violates the rights of the mother and child, claiming that one or the other is perceived as "pure object" and "not as people with a dignity inherent to the human condition and basic rights inherent to that dignity".

The Supreme recalls that these contracts are void in full because they violate article 10 of the Law on Assisted Reproduction Techniques, as well as the fundamental rights recognized in the Constitution and in the Convention on the Rights of the Child. In addition, "there is talk of an attack on human dignity contained in Article 115 of the European Parliament resolution of 17 December 2015", says El Salto.