On 6 September 2025, crowds of women dressed in red, the uniform of the scarlet handmaids in Margaret Atwood’s dystopia[i], flooded the streets of Madrid. This remarkably organised event was launched by Las Criadas[ii] and immediately joined by a multitude of organisations, including ICASM, represented by our co-president Berta O. García.
The aim of this impressive march was to show women’s radical opposition to any move to organise or promote access to surrogacy in Spain. Indeed, there have been numerous attempts to open up the national market to this multimillion-dollar industry, whether by politicians, academics, fertility clinics and surrogacy agencies operating in Spain and abroad, or by organisations representing prospective parents.
This remarkable initiative has shown once again that the feminist movement is determined to oppose surrogacy by all means, as it is a form of violence against women that exploits their reproductive capacity, just like the commercialisation of their oocytes, sterilisation, forced abortion, imposed pregnancies and the lack of legal access to contraception and abortion.
Here is the final statement read at the end of the march
Say no to surrogacy!
Women are not for sale!
OUR MOTHERHOOD IS NOT FOR SALE!
We are here today to express our rejection of surrogacy from abolitionist and feminist standpoints. This practice exploits our reproductive capacity, commodifying and objectifying our newborn children.
We are here to denounce the fact that this illegal and prohibited practice in Spain is being promoted with impunity by a lucrative industry that profits from our motherhood and the sale of our children. We also denounce the fact that this practice is being whitewashed by those who circumvent the law by going to other countries to exploit vulnerable women and take their children. They act as if their desire to be parents gives them the right to trample over the most basic human rights. No desire justifies treating a woman as if she were a custom-made incubator.
No desire justifies treating a woman as though she were a custom-made incubator. No desire justifies the acquisition of babies by contract from vulnerable women. Women and our sons and daughters must be first-class citizens and subjects of law in every country in the world.
Spanish legislation, international treaties and Supreme Court jurisprudence are very clear: ‘surrogate pregnancy’ is a form of violence against women, seriously violating our sexual and reproductive rights, and contrary to public order. Contracts for so-called surrogacy are null and void; motherhood is determined by childbirth. The Penal Code provides for the punishment of those who receive or mediate in the delivery of a child — even in a foreign country — in exchange for financial compensation, with the aim of altering their filiation.
Furthermore, so-called surrogacy involves all the elements of human trafficking as set out in the Palermo Protocol. As its purpose is the exploitation of women for reproduction, they are always recruited through deception (being told that they are not the mothers of the children they give birth to) and coercion, whether social (sexist stereotypes of sacrifice, altruism and devotion to others) or financial. The feminisation of poverty at a global level makes women more vulnerable and turns them into the main target of this multi-million-pound, cross-border industry. It is an industry that exploits women’s reproductive capacity and sells their newborn children, who have fewer rights than pets.
WE DEMAND:
- The application of the Criminal Code to anyone who resorts to surrogacy in any form, whether commercial or altruistic.
- Respect for the principle of non-contractual filiation: a person cannot be the subject of an order or contract. Children are not bought, sold or given away.
- We demand the inclusion of this form of violence against women in our Criminal Code.
- It should be recognised as human trafficking for reproductive exploitation within the Comprehensive Organic Law against Trafficking, which is currently being drafted.
- We must work towards its abolition worldwide through a binding international treaty
[i] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Handmaid%27s_Tale
[ii] https://x.com/LasCriadas
Some pictures of the march
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