The Government of Italy, along with the Italian Permament Mission to the United States and the United Nations Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls, has hosted high-level side event on the margins of the 80th Session of the UN General Assembly (UNGA 80) on “Surrogacy as a Form of Violence against Women and Girls – Need for Global Action”.
They have invited Representative of the Coalition Internationale pour l’Abolition de la Maternité de Substitution – CIAMS
https://webtv.un.org/en/asset/k11/k11e6p5hdz
Remarks by Taina Bien-Aimé on behalf of the International Coalition for the Abolition of Surrogate Motherhood (ICASM)
Excellencies, Distinguished Guests and Colleagues, good afternoon. We thank the Government of Italy for organizing this important event We also convey our deep gratitude to the Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women, Ms. Reem Alsalem, for her groundbreaking report on characterizing surrogacy as a form of violence and discrimination against women with meticulous clarity and grounding in international human rights instruments.
My name is Taina Bien-Aimé, and although the executive director of the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women, I am here today on behalf and as a member of the International Coalition for the Abolition of Surrogate Motherhood or ICASM, a feminist network of over 50 organizations worldwide. It is an honor to join you and represent ICASM.
As we have heard, reproductive surrogacy is a severe human rights violation perpetrated against women and children that is quickly becoming in many nations and in society an accepted – and even celebrated – harmful cultural practice.
Many countries around the world have banned surrogacy on the basis that it violates the dignity of women and children, contributes to maternal mortality, fosters trafficking and exploitation, negates the notion of consent, and impedes efforts to reach equality for women. Some national laws that prohibit surrogacy reach beyond their borders, offering the possibility of prosecuting those who resort to transnational surrogacy, such as is the case in Australia and Spain, even if the application of such laws remains rare.
However, under significant commercial market pressure from the multi-billion-dollar global reproductive technology industry, too many governments are pushing for the normalization, regulation and legalization of surrogacy, including European countries such as Portugal and Ireland, and many states in the United States. It is therefore no longer enough to address this scourge at the national level, as cross-border surrogacy can circumvent national legislation.
The challenges before us are overwhelming, not just created by the profit-making surrogacy industry but by institutions responsible for creating policies. For example, for over 10 years, the Hague Conference on Private International Law has been working on a convention aimed at promoting a supranational system of parental recognition within the context of surrogacy. In doing so, they are sidestepping the harmful consequences of this globalized market and are contributing to making this practice socially and culturally acceptable. Their efforts and analysis focus solely on the commercial stakeholders and profiteers, never on the women whose lives the surrogacy industry puts at risk. Ironically, the Hague Conference, whose mandate includes the governance of international adoption, defines the concept of the sale of children as any case in which a child is assigned to a third party before birth. The very definition of surrogacy.
We also sound the alarm on UN agencies, such as the UNFPA, the World Health Organization, and the OHCHR, that support the regulation or legalization of surrogacy in violation of the international covenants Member States have charged them with upholding.
Changing family patterns in modern times and advances in medical science must not be excuses for Governments to violate the fundamental rights of women and children. Surrogacy, which contravenes international law, including the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and in particular Articles 1, 5 and 6 of CEDAW, respectively mandating Member States to prohibit sex-based discrimination, combat gender stereotypes that degrade women, and address the trafficking in women and girls, must be abolished, not promoted.
As with many human rights violations cases, it remains difficult to identify and collect data on surrogate mothers. Confidentiality clauses in contracts and non-disclosure agreements silence them. In many jurisdictions, surrogacy laws define the women as “gestational carriers” or “reproductive vessels,” not deemed full human beings worthy of study, care or compassion.
In the United States, for example, the only times we have learned of a surrogate mother’s death from sepsis or eclampsia while delivering a contracted baby is when her husband organizes online crowdfunding to raise money for her burial costs. In cases where the transfer of parental rights is refused, judges in all countries believe that the child should be placed with the most socially and financially stable families. The acute social and economic asymmetry between commissioning parents and surrogate mothers systematically disqualifies women who wish to remain part of their children’s lives.
The surrogate mothers’ invisibility, in law, in research, in the lives of the children they bear, and of their suffering, defines dehumanization.
No movement worthy of its mission to promote and protect the fundamental rights of women and girls has ever called for the subjection of women to carry high-risk pregnancies, under contract, with the end goal of being separated from their newborns at birth and delivered to third parties.
We therefore fully support the Special Rapporteur’s call for the establishment of an international instrument that prohibits the sale of women’s bodies and organs, and of children. The abolition of surrogacy is well enshrined within the principles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Thank you.