Reproductive exploitation – Newsletter december 2020 (part 2)

Among actions, events and news, information on surrogacy is very rich at the end of the year. This newsletter has therefore been divided into two episodes: episode 1 already published, Actions; episode 2 that follows, News.

But first of all it is important to wish you a very happy holiday season.

The end of the year is traditionally the time to call for donations. We hope for your support.

We need you, please support us

ICAMS, as you can see, has developed a lot. It has widened its audience and expanded its activities.
In order to keep pace, the question of resources arises. We need 5 to 6,000 Euros to consult lawyers, to compensate the trainees who will help us in 2021, to access useful applications, to set up new actions, etc.
We are counting on you, your friends, your networks…

Consequences of the pandemic, abandoned children. RUSSIA

Three babies, born under surrogacy contracts, could not be handed over to the commissionning parents due to pandemic-related travel restrictions. It was suspected that they would be exported – or smuggled – from Russia to China.
They were born in Russia to surrogate mothers from Kazakhstan, who are now believed to have disappeared after returning to their home countries.
The women, aged 27, 32 and 34, each received 11,000 euros to deliver the children, according to law enforcement sources.
The children, now eight months old, had been entrusted to a nanny in a flat in the city of Krasnoyarsk where they were born. As they were not claimed, they were placed in a state orphanage.

Misinterpretation, surrogacy is not a method of medically assisted procreation. RWANDA

After infertility treatments failed, doctors advised a couple to get the go-ahead from the courts before engaging in a surrogacy procedure.
The judge decided to block this procedure by saying that Rwandan law provides that “procreation occurs between a man and a woman or with assistance” while the petitioners were seeking reproduction between two families, which is prohibited. […] According to the couple’s lawyer who appealed, this process is validated in Rwandan law, which states that the mode of reproduction in Rwanda occurs naturally between a man and a woman or can be medically assisted. And the couple, through their lawyers, considers that surrogate motherhood falls under the category of “medically assisted procreation”.
https://www.newtimes.co.rw/news/surrogacy-legal-rwanda-lawyers-and-doctors-are-confused

Still criminalizing abortion while opening up surrogacy. ECUADOR

Last August the Ecuadorian parliament approved the new organic health code, article 196 of which allows surrogate motherhood.

The article quoted below condemns the anti-feminist stance of a government that maintains the ban on abortion but opens up the surrogacy market.

“This new health code includes a stipulation that women who undergo an abortion will have access to the health service. The often inept press has reported it as if abortion is legalized in Ecuador, but this is not true. The only guarantee is that a woman who has a miscarriage will be treated in a hospital. Something that obviously shouldn’t even need to be specified. What the law doesn’t say is that once treated, if the doctor calls the police because he suspects she had an abortion, she can end up in jail for two years. “For instance, Ecuador, one of the poorest countries in the world, the third poorest country in Latin America where extreme poverty increased the most between 2014 and 2017, offers rich women the opportunity to buy the only thing that poor women can sell, their children. »

https://eltaquigrafo.com/se-vende-nino-ecuatoriano/15308/

Opening up the regulations is tantamount to promoting cross-border surrogacy. UNITED KINGDOM and NETHERLANDS

In this excellent and very thorough article :

  • It is shown that the proposed legislative changes concerning surrogacy in UK and Netherlands will work as an incentive for cross-border surrogacy.
  • It is also shown that there is a very thin line between contract and national systems of pre-conception approval of surrogacy agreements. In other words, when the law substitutes the contract, it does not avoid its effects: exploitation, commodification etc.   (N.B.In the system of pre-conceptional authorisation, the authorities are called upon, prior to conception, to examine and evaluate the contractual arrangements between the intending parents and the surrogate mother.)

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/20502877.2020.1836464

Media coverage of action against Hague Conference’s work

Finally, here is an anthology of articles published as a result of the campaign launched by ICASM to challenge the work of the Hague Conference on surrogacy regulation.

France  Magazine Marianne
Canada  Le Devoir
Spain 
Publico
  Tribuna Feminista
Colombia radio Mañanas BLU
Mexico Cimacnoticias
Italiy
Avenire 1
Avenire 2
Avenire 3

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