PRESS RELEASE ICASM Paris, September 7, 2021
On 4 and 5 September 2021, the DESIR D’ENFANT trade fair was held in Paris: ICASM, supported by its organizations members, was there to oppose this practice, on the theme of the dystopia by Margaret Atwood : the handmaid’s tale. On display and in the workshops it was obvious that behind the glamorous image of surrogacy, lie the interests of the market for which everything can be bought and sold.
This gathering organised by ICASM, supported by Osez le Féministes, Libres Mariannes, the Maisons des Femmes de Paris, the Forum Femmes Méditerranée, CQFD Lesbiennes féministes, the CoRP and the Amazones, was marked by a heartbreaking evocation of all the surrogate mothers who have died from surrogcay, who are invisibilised and ignored. ICASM reaffirmed that parenthood is a choice, not a right, and that no one and nothing can dispose of a child life, and that the trading of women’s reproductive capacity is not worthy of progressive societies.
With the focus on destinations considered advantageous because the remuneration of surrogate mothers is limited by law, with the promotional offers of surrogacy from supernumerary embryos and the guarantees of reimbursement in case of failure, this fair proves once again that surrogacy violates the basic principles on which the equilibrium and viability of our societies rest.
- Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography, art. 2a: ” Sale of children means any act or transaction whereby a child is transferred by any person or group of persons to another for remuneration or any other consideration;…”
- The National Ethics Advisory Committee Opinion, Opinion no. 126 (2017): “ An analysis of the relationships between all those playing a role in a surrogacy procedure revealed a number of risks and violations of a medical, emotional and economic nature. (…) CCNE was particularly struck by the acceptance of the low, but not inexistent, risk for the carrier of death or serious health impairment. Neither the intended parents nor the surrogacy promoters appear to be concerned about it.”.
ICASM S is an international organisation that campaigns for the abolition of surrogacy throughout the world. It gathers forty organizations from thirteen countries and three continents, which fight for women’s rights and/or human rights. It is an organization that bases its action on feminist values, such as equality between men and women, self-determination and women’s emancipation. In its statutes, it clearly mentioned its stand for equality of homosexual and heterosexual sexualities.
Press contact: Marie Josèphe Devillers +-
Gathering organized by CIAMS
Action against the DESIR D’ENFANT exhibition, inspired by Margaret Atwood’s Dystopia: The Scarlet Handmaiden
