Which Countries Allow Commercial Surrogacy?
MADRID (Reuters) – Spanish TV star Ana Obregon has revealed that her newly adopted baby daughter, born to an unidentified surrogate mother, was conceived using the frozen sperm of Obregon’s son who died of cancer three years ago.
In Spain, all forms of surrogacy – including so-called “altruistic” ones where no money changes hands – are illegal.
Here’s a look at surrogacy laws in various countries:
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For-profit surrogacy is banned in Canada, Denmark, New Zealand, Brazil, Britain and Australia, but they all allow some forms of altruistic surrogacy.
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Bulgaria, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Taiwan and Spain prohibit all forms of surrogacy.
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There is no legislation concerning surrogacy at the federal level in the United States, and some states allow commercial surrogacy arrangements.
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Ukraine was until the Russian invasion an international surrogacy hub, involving thousands of babies each year, according to some estimates, many of them taken abroad by foreigners. Reuters has reported that when the war broke out, some foreign couples travelled to collect their children but others were being cared for in a makeshift clinic by nurses.
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Georgia has also been a popular destination for fertility tourism, though commercial surrogacy is legally available only for heterosexual couples. Georgian law does not recognise surrogate mothers as the delivered child’s parent.
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Surrogacy is also allowed in Russia, though the practice has been criticised by religious groups as commercializing the birth of children and in December 2022, President Vladimir Putin recently signed a law barring foreigners from using Russian surrogate mothers.
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Colombia allows commercial surrogacy, but though the practice is recognized by the constitutional court, there are few regulations. A lawmaker in Colombia’s lower house this year proposed a bill he says would safeguard surrogates, prospective parents and the children themselves.
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For-profit surrogacy flourished in Thailand until 2015 when the country banned it for foreigners after a series of high-profile cases, including an Australian couple who were accused of abandoning a baby born with Down’s syndrome.
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Cambodia had no laws regarding surrogacy, but it cracked down on agencies from 2016 under human trafficking laws.
(Reporting by Aislinn Laing, additional reporting by Julia Symmes Cobb in Bogota Editing by Gareth Jones)
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