Sweden: EWL members campaign against surrogate motherhood
[Brussels, 16 March 2012] The Swedish Women’s Lobby has launched a campaing against surrogacy, the arrangement in which a woman carries and delivers a child for another couple or person, and calls on women’s organisations across Europe to recognise surrogate motherhood as a problem and defend women’s full right to their own bodies.
Surrogacy is a global industry in which people in the West exploit women in poorer parts of the world. Regardless of where it takes place, the surrogate mothers are put in a position of dependence. Moreover, surrogacy is an exploitation of women’s bodies, as well as a trade with children.
Although surrogacy is presently not legal in Sweden, in the last couple of years the issue has been up for debate, and the Social Ministry is currently calling for an investigation on the issue.
The Swedish Women’s Lobby has, together with several Swedish women’s organizations, launched a new website against surrogacy. The website “Feminist no to surrogacy” is a politically and religiously independent campaign that takes a strong standpoint against surrogacy on feminist grounds. The campaign support the resolution adopted by the European Parliament in April 2011, stating that surrogacy is an exploitation of the woman’s body and her reproductive organs. The website includes a manifest of the most important standpoints against surrogacy, alongside with a blog and debate articles on the matter.
According to the Swedish Women’s Lobby, an end needs to be put to the industry of surrogacy that reduces the female body to a container. If doors for surrogate motherhood are opened, no matter how regulated it may be, children will be viewed as commodities and women as containers. The Swedish Women’s Lobby opposes the legalization of surrogate motherhood in Sweden. The rights of women and children, not the interest of the buyer, must be the focus of the debate surrounding surrogacy.
