Agents of the National Police have arrested four people in Seville for the crimes of illegal trafficking or sale of a child and forgery of documents after social affairs at the Virgen del Rocío Maternal and Child Hospital reported the admission of a woman in labor who had presented documentation that apparently it belonged to someone else. The Juvenile Prosecutor’s Office has decreed that the newborn be handed over to the Junta de Andalucía.
The four detainees had planned that once this woman gave birth to the newborn, she would be given to a couple who could not have children in exchange for a high economic consideration. Surrogate motherhood is not legalized in Spain, the Police recalled in a press release this Thursday.
What “a priori” these four people intended to carry out was a surrogate motherhood treatment, where couples who cannot have children hire a woman to carry their baby and deliver it later in exchange for financial compensation. This type of maternity in Spain is “illegal”.
After various procedures, the researchers learned that the case was treated by the health personnel as a “poorly controlled pregnancy”, since there were no previous follow-ups or tests. Likewise, in the medical history of the woman in labor there were records of having requested in vitro fertilization treatment because she was unable to have children, “facts that were relevant to presuppose that she was posing as another person.”
