There has been a call from Czech MEPs for the country to explicitly ban commercial surrogacy [1] to protect vulnerable women and children.
Two MPs Zuzana Ožanová and Helena Válková argue that current legislation does not sufficiently reflect the trade behind surrogacy. Although the objection to human trafficking is unanimously recognised by society, the objection to surrogacy is not.
The number of altruistic surrogacies worldwide constitutes only about two per cent of the total number of surrogacy cases, studies show. A ban on commercial surrogacy would thus practically eliminate this practice in the Czech Republic.
Surrogacy is a profitable trade that has several negative impacts on the lives of women and children, Ožanová and Válková argue. “Especially abroad, there have been cases of children being abandoned in the end or clients who did not take them over from the surrogate mothers. Typically, this was a consequence of genetic defects in these children.” The two MPs also point to the possibility of children being lost from sight and disappearing abroad, which is currently being investigated by Ukrainian authorities.