Thread from 21st September 2024
"We are, in other words, about to become legally complicit in the trafficking of women for the purposes of providing babies to Irish couples," wrote Brenda Power in The Sunday Times.
It's actually worse than that, since the new Act allows single people - both men and women - to avail of surrogacy to obtain a baby. For both domestic and international surrogacy, the "intending parent/s" need only be resident in this country for 2 years:
“It is unlikely that a woman would undertake a pregnancy on behalf of a stranger from another country without being offered a significant incentive. It is a fiction to suggest otherwise, but that appears to be the basis on which the legislation is to operate.” IHREC is quoted:
IHREC wrote twice to Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly pointing out that the law doesn't fulfil the State’s obligations under EU law to prevent the trafficking of women for exploitative surrogacy. At the date of drafting its report it said no response had been received.
2024.04.11-Letter-to-Minister-Donnelly-re-AHR-Bill-1.pdf (ihrec.ie)
"Just recently, says the commission, eight people were arrested at the Mediterranean Fertility Institute in Greece, which had advertised its services and its 'excellent surrogate support programme' on the Growing Families website."
Women's Space Ireland
Growing Families, which was back in Dublin last weekend for another of its annual Surrogacy and Egg Donor Conferences, in fact offered a "discounted program" for approved referrals via their agency:
Last year RTE Primetime's Sarah McInerney asked Sam Everingham of Growing Families if there were any countries that he could be completely confident that "everything is done properly"? No, he replied.
IHREC “...is concerned that there has not been sufficient time and regard given to the State’s obligation to prevent and combat exploitative surrogacy as a form of human trafficking,” reported the Law Society Gazette.
As the legislation has now been passed, IHREC has called for the setting up of a review process before the provisions on international surrogacy are commenced, reported the Gazette.
"The exploitation of vulnerable women for surrogacy, the commission says, is 'one of the most concerning, novel and emerging forms of trafficking'. Yet we have enacted a law that legalises what the UN special rapporteur on human rights has called 'the sale of children'," says Brenda Power.
Meanwhile it was reported in The Irish Independent last week of the National Women's Council of Ireland (NWCI) that:
"The NWCI’s members are understood to be split between the rights of those who choose to grow their families through surrogacy, and ethical concerns about the commodification of women as surrogates."
Will NWCI stand up for poor women used in surrogacy?
