An international group including lawyers, doctors, and psychologists called for the repeal of all laws allowing or tolerating surrogacy.
The group gathered in Casablanca, Morocco, on Friday and released a signed document entitled "International Declaration for the Universal Abolition of Surrogacy."
Surrogacy is when a woman carries in her womb one or more children on behalf of intended parents to whom the child will be given after birth.
The declaration was joined by a proposal for an international convention that would bring together all organizations and governments that wish to ratify it.
The group intends to raise global awareness of what it considers to be a practice that violates human dignity.
"We call on [countries] to condemn surrogacy in all modalities and kinds, whether remunerated or not, and the implementation of measures to fight such practice," wrote the signatories, who represent more than 70 countries.
The declaration added that the group is "aware of the suffering of people who may not conceive" and of the "appeal of reproductive technologies."
"We wish to arouse the interest of the greatest number of [countries] and international organizations and in this sense, our approach is political," Aude Mirkovic, one of the main organizers of the initiative, told CNA.
Surrogacy currently is authorized in some U.S. states, Canada, the United Kingdom, Ukraine, Russia, the Netherlands, Denmark, Greece, and India.
Many countries maintain a legal vagueness on the issue, especially concerning the recognition of children born by surrogate motherhood abroad, the Catholic News Agency (CAN) reported.
The declaration included five recommendations for countries. They were:
- Prohibit the practice of surrogacy.
- Deny any legal validity to contracts bearing the undertaking from a woman to carry and deliver a child.
- Punish individuals and corporations acting as intermediaries between the surrogacy mothers and the "orderers."
- Prosecute individuals entering into surrogacy on their territory.
- Prosecute their nationals entering into surrogacy outside their territory.
Mirkovic, a senior lecturer in law, told CNA that a major issue in places where surrogacy is illegal is that foreign commercial companies attempt to recruit potential clients.
"We are particularly aware of this issue in France as we are experiencing very aggressive canvassing by mainly Ukrainian and American companies that come to sell us their services with impunity; we just let it happen," Mirkovic told CNA.
"The result is that women are being used, exploited to give birth to children for clients in various countries, and these children are being ordered and delivered in execution of a contract.
"Not to mention the damage to filiation, the separation from the woman who bore them, which deliberately exposes them to the wound of abandonment."
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