While some countries will issue birth certificates that feature two mothers or fathers, they are not recognised by countries like Italy, where surrogacy is illegal.
The European Commission’s proposal to require member states to recognize surrogacy as an acceptable form of parenthood disregards the best interest of children and fails to uphold the principle of subsidiarity.
Last year, the Spanish supreme court again condemned both surrogacy and attempts by Spaniards to sidestep their country’s legal and ethical rules by contracting surrogacy abroad.
The approach initiated in Casablanca is new in that it does not call for a simple framework for surrogacy, as is already the case in several countries, but for its pure and simple abolition.
The ethical struggle is clouded by an institutional issue: according to the treaty on the functioning of the European Union, measures concerning the family are not the responsibility of Europe. Each state is supposed to decide sovereignly in this matter.
The law will prohibit any activity, deemed to ‘interfere’ with a woman’s decision to have an abortion, from taking place within 100 metres of facilities that offer the procedure.
