“Surrogacy is a bit like what happens to a nanny.
“She knows that her children are not hers and yet she does everything in her power to care for and protect them.”
This is how bioethicist lawyer María Fernanda Pérez describes the practice of surrogacy.
For the
European Union, however, is a form of reproductive exploitation that will soon come under the umbrella of trafficking law when there is coercion.
In Colombia, although regulation has been attempted on two occasions, both bills are archived;
They never passed the first debate in the House.
“And everything that is not prohibited is allowed,” laments Lina Morales, from the Legal Network.
Lawyers like Pérez, who look for a “suitable surrogate woman” and handle civil proceedings to change the name of the parents on the birth certificate, charge from $7,000 per case.
“What women earn varies a lot,” says Pérez.
Feminist groups and the women themselves who offer their womb on social networks assure that many accept for less than 3,000.
But Lorena Restrepo* needs at least $7,500 and a monthly payment for each month of pregnancy.
“I have heard that they can pay more if it is in a clinic, but I live in Pasto [a city in the south of the country] and I cannot leave my children alone for 10 months,” she says by phone.
This 33-year-old single mother supports her three children on a little more than the minimum wage ($255).
“But I have also heard that they pay much less, that some don't even want to pay them,” she says.
The Colombian placed the ad a little over a month ago on Facebook and has already received 10 offers, but none exceeds $5,000.
“I want to give a better life to my children and celebrate my little girl's 15th birthday,” she adds.
In the current Colombian scenario, Lorena can offer her womb, just as any couple, national or foreign, can pay for it.
There is no price regulation, no conditions, or requirements.
And much less a direct association with the reproductive exploitation of this practice, as happens in countries like Spain, France, Germany or Italy.
For María Cristina Hurtado, a feminist lawyer and political scientist, this limbo is a reflection of commercial interests in the country: “This is a multinational business that produces almost as much money as pornography.
The
lobbies
"The ones behind it are the assisted reproduction clinics and the foreign couples who in the United States or Europe buy children for $60,000 and here it costs them almost nothing."
For Hurtado, one of the most critical voices against surrogacy in Colombia, the most serious thing is that it is the left itself who comes out to defend it, "as a feminist measure": "I voted for a government that declared itself against neoliberal policies and are getting into the depths of human rights.
Being against is not moralistic, it is defending the rights of women and children.”
In 2022, the Constitutional Court urged Congress to regulate the practice to get out of this legal loophole.
This also included the option to ban it.
However, there were only two bills - one presented by Alejandro Ocampo, of the Historical Pact, and another by the Ministry of Justice itself - that did not seek to pursue this practice, but rather to regulate it.
They asked for more or less the same thing, although they included different limitations on the age of the surrogate women or the nationality of the “intended parents.”
Two foreign couples who used surrogacy in Colombia denied the interview with EL PAÍS upon learning that opposing voices would participate in the text.
Thus, in that void in which it continues, the current procedure in Colombia is relatively simple.
The first step, after receiving the request from a couple who cannot or does not want to conceive their own baby, begins the selection of the surrogate woman by the clinic or by private lawyers like Pérez.
“We chose it many times by word of mouth.
I never paint things as they are not.
I am very honest with them: I tell them that they can die, that it is just as risky as any other pregnancy and that if the intended parents ask for an abortion, if the fetus comes with diseases, they have to do it because the genetic material is not her.
It’s theirs,” she explains.
That precision, that the eggs are never those of the surrogate woman, was one of the few guidelines that the Court gave.
For the rest, practically everything had to be done.
The proposal of the official Ocampo, however, opened the possibility that the egg was from the pregnant woman.
“This is part of the absolute lack of knowledge of decision makers.
“Everyone wants to go out and regulate it without having a clue,” Hurtado criticizes.
Ocampo explains in an interview with EL PAÍS that “it was not a mistake, but we had to review that first version” and that he plans to re-present another bill that allows this practice.
“The ideal would be for surrogacy to not exist, but the Court put us in a mess that no one wants to get into because that takes away votes.
It is a difficult topic and we wanted to restrict it as much as possible.
This limbo sucks.
But what can we do?
Are we waiting for some dead woman or children who are victims of trafficking or prostitution to appear?”
And he adds: “Colombia cannot become a child factory and the only option is to restrict it as much as possible.
“That was what the Court asked of us.”
However, Judge José Fernando Reyes, president of the Constitutional Court of Colombia, denies the congressman: “The Court only asked that the legal vacuum that exists be ended, since it creates havens for economic interests.
It is criticizable that congressmen throw the ball at the Court because it delegitimizes democracy.
These social debates have to take place in Congress, like the other hundred or so exhortations that we have issued.”
Meanwhile
,
Morales, from the Legal Network, is most afraid of the danger of “paper holding everything”: “There are many things that are added to contracts that are completely unconstitutional, such as forcing abort someone.
Many of the women who accept do not know their rights.
This is the consequence of a country without regulations and what makes this practice more appealing to these parents in Colombia.”
Olatz Mendiola, president of the Son Nuestros Hijos association, which represents families created by surrogacy, agrees that these practices be regulated and asks that the legislation be guaranteeing.
She rejects the terminology “wombs for rent” as being “very offensive to the women who have gestated our daughters and sons.”
Asked about the prices they usually pay in Latin America, she explains that she does not know the information, but that payment is necessary for both medical personnel and women "who voluntarily donate their ability to conceive," as "compensation for the inconveniences and risks they suffer." “This process means for them.”
“Surrogacy is a form of assisted reproduction aimed at people with health problems that prevent them from gestating or physical or structural infertility, and adoption is a measure of protection for minors that every person, and not exclusively those who cannot conceive, should consider,” he says via email.
“They see women as vessels”
The choice of the surrogate woman, according to Pérez, can last months.
The candidates undergo “exhaustive” examinations: two psychological tests, medical and laboratory checks… “Then, I hire two companies that are in charge of seeing their degree of exposure, if they have a history, if their partners agree, if their bosses consider them responsible…”, he narrates.
Later, after checking that the “intended parents” also have no criminal record, the name changes are made before a notary, with a biological test that certifies that the surrogate woman has no genetic ties to the newborn.
“It may not seem like the job of their dreams to everyone, like those who are recyclers or cleaners, but they have access and know very well what it is.
At least I make it very clear to you.”
For criminal lawyer Helena Hernández, surrogacy is a “perverse cocktail” that sees women as “vessels or containers.”
“It is a fallacy to think that everything we don't like ignores our physical integrity or our dignity.
I may be a service employee and I may not like it, but it is not unworthy nor does it objectify me as a woman.
It cannot be compared with surrogacy, because the product of labor is the woman herself.
“You cannot separate a womb from what a woman is.”
Regarding consent, Hernández is blunt: “The supposed consent they speak of cannot be superior to that of human dignity.
The same thing happens with the sale of organs, no matter how much freedom we want to have and there are organs that do not serve us, we do not do it because we know that there will be a capture of the most vulnerable people... We understand that, but when they are women And on top of that there are children involved, it always costs more.”
And he concludes: “A public policy is not created from the exception of those who consent, but for the majority.
And even less so when the minority is the privileged one.”
“I don't want money, I want a house”
Gladys Gómez* doesn't want money.
“I want a house so I can live in peace,” she says over the phone.
She is from Cali and she has never been a mother, she works “whatever she can.”
Sometimes in aesthetics, other times as a prostitute.
“If it were up to me, they would adopt me too along with the baby, even if it was to clean up.
I don't even have enough money to buy a soda.
Only a miracle is going to make me give up on this idea,” she says via WhatsApp message.
In Colombia, 37.6% of women cannot pay for the basic food basket.
Therefore, if there is something that all the voices consulted - for and against - agree on, it is that Colombia is becoming a place in high demand by families, mainly foreigners.
In the last four years, Pérez has handled at least 80 cases.
“This practice is getting more and more,” he says.
A statement that does not surprise Hernández: “In Colombia all the business requirements come together: low prices and high vulnerability of women.
No matter how difficult it is for a couple not to be parents, parenthood is not a right.
There cannot be the right to buy a baby.”
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