EU Bishops: 'Surrogate motherhood is a violent assault on human dignity'

Surrogacy has become a booming industry across the world. This is true both in developed and less developed countries. It represents a serious violation of the human dignity and basic fundamental rights of the woman and of the child. It involves trafficking in human beings for reproductive purposes. No common rules have been so far adopted at the EU level, although there are common ethical and legal grounds among Member States for tackling this phenomenon.

The Working Group on Ethics in Research and Healthcare of COMECE has prepared an Opinion assessing the ethics of Surrogate Motherhood and discussing its tangled legal repercussions and advocating international or European rules to address it.

The Opinion makes clear that all forms of gestational surrogacy represent a violent assault on the human dignity of all involved in this exchange; in particular, it instrumentalises the gestational mother (often trapped in involuntary poverty and ruthlessly trafficked) and treats the child as an object. Therefore, the practice can in no circumstances be countenanced.

The Opinion, bearing also in mind the European Union set of competences, recommends, as a possible first step, the evaluation of the feasibility of the refusal of the transcription of birth certificates of the birth countries, thus curbing a practice which, as the Opinion cogently argues in three progressive steps, runs counter to the fundamental values the European Union espouses.

Download the Opinion text in pdf here: www.comece.org/site/en/press/pressreleases/newsletter.content/1901.html