The rise in the use of surrogates abroad is leaving more babies at risk of becoming stateless, experts have said, amid growing calls for urgent global regulation of the practice.
The warning follows the suspension of a 15-year effort by The Hague Conference on Private International Law (HCCH) to establish a global surrogacy convention, which was paused due to divisions among member states.
The subject of international surrogacy came to prominence this week when Jens Spahn, a former German health minister and ally of the chancellor, Friedrich Merz, was forced to resign his position in his party after revealing he and his husband used a surrogate mother to become parents – a practice he had criticised in the past and his party is vehemently opposed to.
Member states involved in the HCCH included the US, UK, Australia and Canada, where surrogacy is permitted in some form, as well as France, Germany, Italy and Spain, which have heavily restricted or banned surrogacy domestically.
Last year, Denmark was forced to change its laws to allow legal parentage recognition in foreign surrogacy arrangements, after the European court of human rights ruled that preventing this violated children’s rights.
The UN’s special rapporteur on violence against women and girls, Reem Alsalem, has called for surrogacy to be abolished globally, calling it a “system of violence, exploitation and abuse against women”.
Marie-Josèphe Devillers, who runs the International Coalition for the Abolition of Surrogate Motherhood (CIAMS), said she worked with surrogates who regretted their decision, and said they felt “cheated, lied to and exploited”.
Source: Rise in overseas surrogates ‘increases risk of stateless babies’ | Society | The Guardian