A 68-year-old Spanish actor’s decision to have a child via a surrogate in the US has set off a political firestorm in Spain, prompting criticism from four government ministers as well as renewed calls to reconsider Spain’s longstanding ban on the practice.
The TV star Ana Obregón dominated headlines across Spain a week after ¡Hola! magazine published a photo of her holding a newborn baby outside a hospital in Miami. The magazine explained that her baby girl had been born using a surrogate, three years after Obregón lost her son and only child, Aless Lequio, to cancer.
Obregón appeared to confirm the report soon after, posting the cover of the magazine on social media. “A light full of love came into my darkness,” read the post. “I will never be alone again. I AM ALIVE AGAIN.”
What started as celebrity gossip swiftly became fodder for the country’s politicians. “Surrogacy is a practice that is not legal in Spain,” the country’s equality minister, Irene Montero, a Podemos MP, told reporters. “It is legally recognised in our country as a form of violence against women.”
She pointed to the women who become surrogate mothers. “Is there a bias towards women in poverty? Definitely,” she said. “We can’t forget the reality of these women in precarious situations or who are at risk of, or in, poverty.”
Her position was backed by a handful of ministers from the Socialist party, reflecting the coalition government’s attempt to position itself as a staunch defender of women’s rights. “Women’s bodies should not be bought nor rented to satisfy anyone’s desires,” Felix Bolaños, the minister for the presidency, told reporters, while the budget minister, María Jesús Montero, described it as “yet another way to exploit women’s bodies”.
While the practice is illegal in Spain – as in France, Germany and Italy – Spaniards who go abroad to have children via surrogacy are not penalised in any way. In the past decade, the intended parents of more than 2,500 children born to surrogates abroad have been granted legal parenthood in Spain, backed by judicial rulings that have called on authorities to act in the best interests of the child.
The government’s position was rebuffed by Son Nuestros Hijos, or They Are Our Children, an association that represents more than 700 families who have sought surrogacy in countries where the practice is legal, such as Canada and the US.
“They act as if we are violating the woman or her integrity, but it’s not like that at all,” said Santiago García, who is currently expecting his second child via a surrogate in the US. “The woman chooses everything. She’s in control and makes the decisions over her own body.”
The association has long called on Spain to regulate the practice, describing it as one of the few realistic options for LGBT parents, single parents and infertile couples to form families. “Right now in the region of Madrid, the wait time for an adoption is around 15 years,” said García.
The conservative Ciudadanos party said on Wednesday that it would renew its efforts to legalise the practice in Spain. “We have always defended surrogacy,” Patricia Guasp told broadcaster TVE, adding that the party would seek to put forward legislation on “altruistic” surrogacy, which doesn’t involve any kind of financial compensation.
On Thursday the conservative People’s party leader, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, sought to quell all talk of the subject. “We need to debate it, but it’s not the main problem we have right now in Spain,” he told reporters.
The debate in Spain comes as surrogacy makes headlines across Europe and the UK. Italy’s conservative majority said last week that it would seek to prosecute those who go abroad to have a baby via surrogacy, while in Britain a government-commissioned review concluded that the intended parents of a child born to a surrogate should be able to access legal parenthood from the moment of birth.
