April 20, 2024

A sleeping human rights issue: surrogacy

Michael Cook

I was delighted to see the Nobel Peace Prize go to Malala Yousafzai, of Pakistan, for her work in advocating education for girls, and Kailash Satyarthi, of India, for protesting against child slavery and bonded labour.

Perhaps the prize panjandrums are getting closer to what may become one of the big human rights of the first half of our century: commercial surrogacy. This week the Australian media uncovered yet another surrogacy scandal after the Baby Gammy case. This time a couple abandoned a twin in India because it was the “wrong” sex. Apparently a senior politician leaned on Australian consular staff to expedite the adoption – and the abandonment.

In the murky world of commercial surrogacy the rights of the children and the mother are clearly at risk. Two senior Australian judges have now called for a national inquiry. “I’ve spent many sleepless nights. I’ve heard things and I’ve seen things that I really don’t think anyone should see … and I find it deeply distressing that nothing is being done about the issue,” says the Chief Judge of the Federal Circuit Court, John Pascoe.

So I was also delighted to read that some politicians in the Council of Europe are petitioning for an inquiry as well. Their motion sums the issue up quite well:

“Surrogacy undermines the human dignity of the woman carrier as her body and its reproductive function are used as a commodity … The unregulated nature of surrogacy poses additional concerns regarding the exploitation of women in disadvantaged positions and fertility tourism resulting in a black market of ‘baby selling’.

“The practice of surrogacy also disregards the rights and human dignity of the child by effectively turning the baby in question into a product. The Convention on the Rights of the Child declares that children have a right to be protected from abuse or exploitation and calls on States to act in the best interest of the child. Surrogacy arrangements turn the baby into a commodity to be bought and sold. Moreover, surrogacy manipulates the identity and parentage of children and robs them of any claim to their gestational carrier, which recent research points to being harmful to the development and wellbeing of the baby.”

I hope that the Nobel Peace Prize committee is listening. 

Michael Cook
More and more people are concerned about the black market in babies.
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