The United Nations Human Rights Council appointed Reem Alsalem as Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls, its causes and consequences. On July 8, 2024, she publicized her communication to the government of Greece regarding her concerns about “altruistic surrogacy” in its jurisdiction.
Ms. Alsalem wrote:
the regulation of surrogacy in Greece appears to disproportionately focus on the protection and security of the commissioning parents, while lacking effective safeguards and due considerations to the rights of the surrogate mother, and the children born through surrogacy.
The letter describes many ways in which the rights of surrogate mothers and the children born of these procedures are violated, and it is worth reading in full. Perhaps the most alarming questions revolve around the economic coercion practiced under the legal fiction of “altruistic surrogacy.”
[T]he regulation of surrogacy in Greece also has gaps concerning the protection of women living in situations of economic vulnerability. Indeed, according to information received, poor or migrant women are selected to be surrogate mothers precisely because of their vulnerable situation. Hence, according to data received, more than 60 per cent of surrogate mothers are not citizens of Greece. A study noted that most of them are from Bulgaria, Poland, Georgia, Albania, and Romania. This was intensified by the regulatory change in 2014, which allows surrogate mothers to not be Greek citizens, or even have permanent residency, placing migrant women at greater risk.
Additionally, I share the concern that, although according to Law 3089/2002 surrogacy should be carried out exclusively for “altruistic” purposes, there are allegations that surrogacy and egg “donation” are, in fact, carried out for financial reasons. It is possible to observe surrogate mothers who pretend to be the commissioner’s best friends (in accordance with the principle of altruism) but in reality, are usually younger non-Greeks than the commissioning parents or, in some situations, their foreign-born domestic workers.
The Georgia Green Party Platform supports the Declaration on Women’s Sex-Based Rights and endorses the Draft International Convention for the Abolition of Surrogacy to protect women locally and globally from the exploitative surrogacy industry. The party commits to “protect women in Georgia and globally from the predatory domestic and global surrogacy market and its reliance on the trafficking of impoverished women’s bodies.”
In the discussions party members had prior to adopting this position, the question of “altruistic surrogacy” attracted focus. Evidence showing how jurisdictions which allowed surrogacy under this label had abuses like those Ms. Alsalem suspects are happening in Greece persuaded the party that abolition was the best policy.
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