” When Christians, Protestants, Feminists, and Communists all agree on everything, you know it’s awful”. Kajsa Ekis Ekman, a Swedish artist, spoke to a section of journalists this week in Rome during the next annual Casablanca Declaration meeting. The spectators ‘ allies are unified on one before: their unwavering commitment to end surrogacy in all forms.
I am one of the 100 “experts” from 75 nations who signed onto the Casablanca Declaration in 2023. Our diverse partnership opposes this motherless baby-enabling systems because it defies the respect and right of both women and children. We counsel all nations to:
- Ban surrogacy in their country
- Deny any constitutional authenticity to contracts that promise a woman to carry and give a child.
- Punish those who serve as intermediaries between the surrogacy mother and the orderers.
- Prosecute those who use surrogacy in their own country.
- Prosecute their citizens outside their borders who have a proxy mother.
The two-day event had speakers who had their remarks translated into Italian and English and were crammed throughout the day. The event platformed listeners from five countries including members of the European parliament from both major events, members of the Vatican, bioethicists, doctors, scholars, journalists, and feminists. Presenters agreed that extreme measures must be taken to ban surrogacy everywhere, aside from the two UN representatives who thoroughly refused to take a position on the issue and were present to “listen.”
One of the main spokeswomen for the Declaration, and its most potent voice, is Olivia Maurel. She described her experience as a surrogate baby, the accompanying emotional distress, and the lifetime of mental health issues she experienced as a result.
Olivia is one of the few surrogates who is both ancient enough and brave enough to criticize the process given the recent development of this method and the fact that it’s also somewhat uncommon due to its risk and cost. She has, nevertheless, shared that she has spoken with a number of other surrogate-born children who have experienced harm but who feel they don’t speak out because of what Olivia refers to as “divided loyalty.” That is, giving message to their problems will result in resistance, or a complete loss of marriage, with the people who raised them. Olivia has experienced this professionally.
As one of the original signatories of the Declaration, I presented almost at the annual 2023 event in Casablanca. My nonprofit, Them Before Us, is dedicated to defending children’s rights to their mother and father, and that makes us staunch opponents of surrogacy in all cases, whether it is commercial or altruistic, traditional ( the birth mother is also the genetic mother ) or gestational ( the birth mother is carrying an unrelated child ), whether the commissioning parents are heterosexual or homosexual. Surrogacy often forces babies to sacrifice for grownups, and therefore, it is always an injustice.
Surrogacy is generally prohibited in Europe because it has striking similarities to child trafficking and female exploitation. The Casablanca Declaration’s people hope to maintain that state.
However, representatives from Africa and South America were present at the conference, both of whom are attracting# BigFertility’s attention because of a large number of financially vulnerable women and a lack of or absent denunciation of the practice.
Like many countries and planets, there are surrogate hotbeds yet within Europe. In Ukraine, women who have been sent to the front lines or killed are in desperate need of money. This is where the reproduction industry has come from. Now, 25 percent of all foreign infertility takes place in Ukraine.
But even in the U. S., where surrogacy is “highly regulated”, it creates patients. Jennifer Lahl, the director of the Center for Bioethics and Culture Network, stated at the meeting that it is “highly regulated to defend the purchasers.” The professionals. The specialists. The companies. The broker. Which is real. They omit the crucial fact that regulation does n’t protect the women or the children they deliver.
Lahl, who is the victim of some surrogacy- gone- bad stories, shared examples of mothers who were biologically harmed or economically threatened, or who died at the hands of fertility doctors and “purchasing” parents.
She described Linda’s following substitute pregnancy as being for a couple from China. The buying parents divorced and gave her$ 80,000 to kill both of her children while she was pregnant and had twins. Linda turned down the offer and declared she would acquire the kids. The wealthy mother stated that she did n’t want her children to be raised in a lower-income household. When the twins were born, Linda learned that the Chinese family kept the small girl and the child was put up for adoption. Linda describes having PTSD as a result of the stress of her surrogate pregnancy.
Business infertility was harshly criticized at the meeting. But among listeners and guests, the idea of “altruistic” infertility was likewise critiqued. Commissioning parents are permitted to handle “expenses,” which can amount to in the tens of thousands of dollars, even in areas where corporate surrogacy is prohibited. Additionally, in moral plans cash is still flowing to “donors”, physicians, and lawyers. Only the woman is paid for a pregnancy that is always high-risk and involves her.
Two days after the conference’s conclusion and just down the street, the Vatican issued Dignitas Infinita, a 20- page document five years in the making condemning affronts to the human person including surrogacy. While some may scratch their head as to why surrogacy is counted among euthanasia, abortion, transgender surgeries, human trafficking, and abortion as violations against the human person, members of the Casablanca Declaration do not. We are aware that surrogacy in all forms is a harmful both for women and children. And that’s why we’re fighting for a global end to the practice.
