Surrogacy: What regulation means

By Ana-Luana Stoicea-Deram, political scientist, sociologist and professor in Paris. President of collectif CORP, feminist & abolitionist network against surrogacy.

From February 6 to 9, 2018, The Hague Conference convened its expert group on parentage and surrogacy. Based on the principle that « procreation conventions for others date back to the Bible’s time » (2012 report), the Conference aims at transnational recognition of this practice’s effects. It is exclusively lawyers involved in this practice whom the Conference has chosen as advisers, just as it consults exclusively NGOs that are in favour of it. However, the starting assumption is false: there is no surrogate mother in the Bible, all women – including slaves – are recognized as mothers of their children, from whom they are never separated.

In the face of these efforts to regulate surrogacy at the international level, it is important to understand why some…