Category: Spain

Commercial Surrogacy, Law, Spain, Surrogacy

Spain’s High Court rejects commercial surrogacy as ‘exploitation’

Intended Parents

Source BioEdge

Spain’s High Court has ruled that commercial surrogacy constitutes “unacceptable exploitation” of both the child and the biological mother, according to El Pais.

The case involved a Spanish woman who made a contract with a woman in the Mexican state of Tabasco in 2015 to bear a child with the help of a surrogacy agency.

The court declared that adoption was the better option for protecting “the best interests of the child”. “Both are treated as mere objects, not as persons endowed with the dignity of their condition as human beings and the fundamental rights inherent to that dignity,” the court stated.

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Spain, Surrogacy

Spanish Evangelical Alliance on surrogacy: “It exploits and commodifies women”

Intended Parents

Source Evangelical Focus

The Bioethics Working Group of the Spanish Evangelical Alliance (AEE) has published a document analysing the issue of surrogacy.

The text, the first in the Spanish evangelical sphere to address this specific issue, is structured in different sections that present a definition of this practice and a reflection from several points of view, such as theological, social or ethical, and ends with proposals for a near future.

The AEE justifies its publication by the importance that surrogacy has gained in the social and political debate in recent years, and also because of the lack of specific legal regulation of this practice, which is prohibited in Spain but allows babies born through surrogacy in other countries to be registered in the Civil Registry.

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Spain, Surrogacy

The shadowy rent-a-womb business thriving in Spain

Intended Parents

Source Elpais

On the ground floor of a building in the Madrid commuter town of San Sebastián de los Reyes, there is an agency offering wombs for rent. The office has nothing to identify it as such, triggering bewilderment among those seeking their services.

A man with blue eyes and a striped shirt emerges and introduces himself as the company’s Spanish representative to a couple who made an appointment via WhatsApp after seeing the clinic advertised on Twitter. The ad had a photo of four pregnant women and a message that read: “Our surrogate mothers give birth to around 370 babies a year.”

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Spain, Surrogacy

In Spain, international adoptions plunge while surrogacy grows

Intended Parents

Source ElPais

In a little over a decade, the number of foreign children adopted by Spanish parents has plunged from 5,541 to 531, representing a drop of more than 90%.

The effects of the economic crisis, the refusal by some countries to let same-sex couples adopt, and the long waiting times have been cited as causes for this sharp decline.

But new voices are starting to add another reason, which is hard to measure because Spain keeps no official records of it: surrogacy. While the practice is not legal in Spain, hundreds of couples are going abroad to seek the service elsewhere, in countries such as Ukraine and the United States.

“The surrogacy trend has increased in the last few years, and this rise coincides in time with a drop in international adoptions, which is relevant because surrogacy is also international,” wrote Federico de Montalvo, president of Spain’s Bioethics Committee, in a recent column published in this newspaper.

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Legal Issues, Spain

Spanish families stranded in Ukraine with their surrogate babies

Intended Parents

Source EuroNews

Dozens of Spanish families who have had children via surrogate mothers in Ukraine are being blocked from returning home, with the Spanish government citing issues of medical malpractice and human trafficking in the industry.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement on Wednesday that it will deal with around 30 families affected on a case-by-case basis, noting that it has “an obligation to preserve and protect the rights” of the women who carried and gave birth to the children.

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Spain, Surrogate Mother

Spain – Single mom from B.C. gives the gift of family to man from Spain

Intended Parents

Source Surrey Now-Leader

Kara Erickson gave the gift of family by being a surrogate mother for Josep Cañadas, who’s from Spain. (Submitted by New Bloom Photography)

On May 1, Kara Erickson gave birth to a healthy baby girl and then handed her over to Josep Antonio Castelló Cañadas, a man she’d met only once before in Las Vegas.

In the fall of 2016, while at an industry trade show, Erickson, who co-owns Chilliwack’s Yellow Bird Birth, had a chance encounter with Nathan Chan, the managing director of Proud Fertility in Calgary. The two—who connected over their shared stillbirth and loss doula training—began talking about egg donation and surrogacy, which Chan’s firm specializes in, and Erickson said she felt like she could be of help.

“I’d always wanted to be a surrogate,” said 28-year-old Erickson in April, while rubbing her very pregnant belly. “But I never pursued it—it was more like if somebody I knew needed somebody to carry for them I could do it.”

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