[Brussels, 31 March 2015]
The European Women’s Lobby (EWL), the Center for Bioethics and Culture (USA), the French « Collectif pour le Respect de la Personne » ( CoRP), and several associations backed by European and American personalities are calling for the abolition of the baby business called euphemistically « surrogacy ».
In a text made public today, the signatory associations joined together to involve themselves in the works on transnational surrogacy, which have been hidden from public scrutiny by the Hague Conference on Private International Law (HCCH).
The HCCH is a major actor in the making of international law. It will decide tomorrow whether its member states accept to work on a future text for shaping international law in relation to transnational surrogacy, and particularly, legal parenthood and the legal status of the child in surrogacy. Its goal will be to try and facilitate the mutual recognition of parenthood from surrogate mothers’ contracts.
The signatory associations denounce this completely unacceptable way of promoting surrogacy without consulting the civil society. They recall that surrogacy is a practice of exploitation contrary to International Human Rights. They propose the writing within the UNO of a convention for the abolition of surrogacy made on the model of the abolition of slavery.
This text is signed by the European Women’s Lobby, the largest umbrella organisation of women’s associations in the European Union (EU), the American Center for Bioethics and Culture, the French NGO CoRP, a feminist association against surrogacy which has already launched an appeal to the French President signed by numerous French leading figures, Alice Schwarzer co-founder of the Feminist Liberation Movement in Germany, the Swedish Women’s Lobby (presided by Gertrud Åström), the Romanian Women’s Lobby, the feminist network ‘No To Surrogacy,’ created by Kajsa Ekis Ekman, a Swedish journalist and feminist, the Center for bioethics and culture (USA), Elfriede Hammerl an Austrian journalist and feminist, plus several French organisations:
CADAC (Coordination of Associations for the right to abortion and contraception), The Lesbian Coordination in France, the Association of Elected persons concerned by violence against women (presided by Geneviève Couraud), l’Assemblée des Femmes funded by the former French minister Yvette Roudy, « Osez le Féminisme » a leading French group of young feminists, and « L’université des femmes » (Belgium).
French version of the press release: http://collectif-corp.com/2015/03/23/conference-de-la-haye-intervention-internationale-pour-labolition/
Full text in English: https://collectifcorp.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/surrogacy_hcch_feminists_english.pdf
