Oireachtas committee hears from surrogacy advocates

21st April 2022

Two “British experts in domestic and international surrogacy” appeared before the Oireachtas Joint Committee on International Surrogacy on Wednesday to advocate against a ban on commercial surrogacy.

One of them, Natalie Gamble is a fertility lawyer and an advocate on behalf of families formed by surrogacy and other forms of Assisted Human Reproduction.

She told the committee it is “naive to paint domestic or altruistic surrogacy as wholly desirable and international or commercial surrogacy as wholly undesirable. There are no such bright lines”.

She added. “In truth there are a range of approaches to surrogacy involving good and bad practice everywhere. A far more useful question is what makes surrogacy ethical and how to promote it.”

Meanwhile, one member of the committee has said it is ‘Borderline racism’ to suggest women in poorer countries cannot consent to being surrogates. Commercial surrogacy is widely banned, including by countries such as India, on the grounds that it exploits low-income women.

Fine Gael senator, Mary Seery Kearney, who had her own child through a surrogacy arrangement in India, said that “There is an idea that Irish women are able to make fully informed decisions, and be supported in making those decisions, to become surrogates. But somehow, women in other jurisdictions are not able to do that either because of the country that they’re in, their socio-economic background, or different cultural dimensions? The idea that they are somehow not able to make informed decisions is, I think, borderline racism”.