The Constitutional Court of Portugal has annulled several points of the law that regulates access to surrogate motherhood, popularly known as rented womb, which had been in force in this country since August 2017.
It is considered that constitutional rights are violated both of the pregnant mother and the baby. This change will not affect the surrogacy processes that are already underway.
What was the law?
It was a fairly restrictive regulation. Surrogacy was allowed only to women without a uterus or who had a medical condition that prevented them from becoming pregnant.
Also, this resource was alone reserved for heterosexual couples. Men, women couples and women alone were left out. The approved text prohibited financial compensation for the nine months of pregnancy. Only the payment of medical expenses by the beneficiary family was allowed.
What has changed?
The Portuguese Constitutional Court has "knocked down" the norm on the grounds that it violates constitutional rights of both the womb and the baby. Among the censored points are:
- That there is no possibility that the pregnant woman regrets, which prevents "the full exercise of her fundamental right to personality development".
- "Excessive indeterminacy" of the law within the limits imposed on the parties to the contract, which in practice means that negotiations can be carried out on the conditions of pregnancy that could be excessive.
- The anonymity of the donors of ovules or spermatozoa and of the pregnant woman for the future baby, because it imposes "an unnecessary restriction to the rights of personal identity and the development of the personality" of the people born by surrogacy.
The decision does not affect the gestations approved by the National Assisted Fertilization Council (CNPMA), the body that until now was responsible for assessing whether all the requirements were met.
Ethical issues
What has happened in the neighboring country is nothing more than the expression in the courts of the ethical dilemma that involves the use of rent bellies for people who cannot or do not want to conceive a biological child, especially when there is money involved.
A debate that is also present in Spain where, for the moment, surrogacy is illegal and couples who want to exercise it should go to mothers for rent abroad.
Precisely this month, in a conference on bioethics held in Madrid, issues such as the consequences that the early separation of his biological mother, the "reification" of women and children, the lucrative nature of this practice could have for the newborn or the very existence of the right to have children.
In this regard, Mariano Casado, Professor of Legal Medicine at the University of Extremadura and a member of the Central Commission of Ethics of the Collegiate Medical Organization (WTO), said it should be called replacement pregnancy and recalled that the position of the WTO towards Surrogacy is that "it would only be consistent with medical ethics if it has an altruistic character."
In this line is the only regulation proposal on the table in our country, presented by citizens last year: surrogacy, yes, but regulated and without economic benefit for the pregnant woman.
Via The plural
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