Open a serious and in-depth debate that concludes in a legal regulation of surrogacy that maintains its illegality or that admits it. This is the position of the PP on the possibility of being a mother through another woman. An ambiguous position as it has been in the popular leadership for years, when the different sensitivities within the party have only postponed that same debate that the popular leadership itself now wants to promote.
But Feijóo’s PP adds an element such as a red line that it would not be willing to cross if surrogacy is allowed, “there can be no economic transaction”, that is, “there can be no payment to the surrogate mother”, there cannot be ” commercial interest, say the sources consulted.For their part, the ministers of the coalition government have recalled that this practice is illegal and have indicated that it constitutes a “form of violence against women”.
The leadership of the PP wants this debate to take place because it is based on the fact that in Spain surrogacy is illegal, but in other countries it is legal, and that means that many couples, men and women who cannot have children come to this possibility, but then they encounter the problem of registering as children of that mother or that father. If the registration is accepted, they immediately acquire Spanish nationality and filiation as full-fledged children of that person, without going through an adoption process.
During the governments of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero and Mariano Rajoy, despite the fact that surrogacy was prohibited, there was a circular that recommended that consulates abroad register these children as nationals. In 2019, already with Pedro Sánchez, that instruction was changed and it was recommended that the registration not take place, although in fact, and more so with the pandemic, or with the war in Ukraine, where many Spanish couples went to have a child for surrogacy, registrations have occurred.
For this reason, from the leadership of the PP it is considered that there should be a consistent regulation that if it does not allow pregnancy, it does not allow filiation abroad, or legalize subrogation, and that the problem ends, because “there can be no formal legality and another in fact”.
But it is a very complex issue, they recognize in the popular leadership, because “there are different sensibilities in society” and also in the PP, as a reflection of that society. Hence, Feijóo’s team advocates opening a “calm and serious” debate that leads to a consensus that allows regulation, either to prohibit it or to allow it. The PP plans to open it when the next PP congress is to be held, which in any case will be held after the general elections, scheduled for December.
A debate that does have to be calm and serene, the leadership of the PP considers that it cannot take place now in Spain, due to the existing tension and the division itself in the Government, as was demonstrated this Tuesday, when the Minister of Social Affairs, Ione Belarra, from Unidas Podemos, did not present the Family Law approved by the Council of Ministers, just as Irene Montero has been removed from the Parity Law that Sánchez presented, and that the Ministry of Equality did not do.
In reality, the PP has been postponing the adoption of a clear position for a long time. In 2017, and given the internal debate, and the impossibility of reaching an agreement between the different sectors of the party on surrogacy, the matter was shelved, and the presentation of which Javier Maroto was a speaker, did not rule on the matter and referred the matter to a bioethics commission, that is, experts, to establish a position.
So, in 2017, when discrepancies prevented regulation, the then president of the Xunta de Galicia was in favor of its regulation. Feijóo then stressed that “we are on the verge of ethical approaches, but ethics are adjusting and the ethical principles of the 18th century are not those of the 21st. A person who wants to have a child must be respected.”
Now the leadership of the PP is open to making this debate and even regulating it so that the law does not remain on paper with the practices that are carried out, but the popular ones have a red line “that it not be commercialized” with this practice, which in fact, it would minimize the cases in which surrogacy could be legal in Spain.
The number two of the PP, Cuca Gamarra, assured yesterday in Congress that the legalization of surrogacy “is a complex aspect, which deserves deep and serene debates, since it affects many moral, ethical, religious issues, with many opinions by Spanish society”.
