It is not the first time, nor will it be the last, that a cover of Hola marks the entire news agenda of the country, but few cases are remembered like this, in which several government ministers and representatives of all parties had to pronounce on the theme and all the television news programs opened with it. It is clear that surrogacy – a term used by the law – stings and the circumstances surrounding the case of Ana Obregón, even more so. In fact, Hola had to disable the comments on the news on her Instagram account as soon as the news was posted, which caused a rebellion among the users, who continued to talk about the subject in other photos (among them, some of Rosalía).
What is it about that photo of the celebrity leaving Memorial Regional Hospital in Miami in a wheelchair with her baby, who is also called Ana, in her arms, to generate such virulent reactions and recurring comparisons with The Handmaid’s Tale? “It is a harsh image, which shows the reality of what this market means and that widespread idea that you can reproduce yourself whenever you want in any way”, believes Itziar de Lezcuona, director of the Observatory of Bioethics and Law of the University from Barcelona.
The team of experts in ethics and legislation that Lezcuona coordinates already issued an unequivocal report in 2019 against the legalization of this practice, which they consider to instrumentalize and objectify pregnant women “by reducing her to the function of a mere vessel or incubator”. The report also concluded that there is no true autonomy of the pregnant woman, who resorts to this work with her body moved by situations of vulnerability.
For Ana Miramontes, a lawyer and member of the Son Nuestros Hijos association, which brings together families formed by surrogacy, the photo of Ana Obregón is proof that this reality is there and should be regulated. “This woman has appeared on a cover and throughout the country she does not talk about anything else, it is a situation that exists,” she claims.
Miramontes, who is not herself a surrogate mother but is dedicated to advising families out of personal conviction, also speaks out on the issue that is raising the most suspicion, that a 68-year-old woman like Obregón has been able to agree without problems to fulfill that wish. . “It is a global process in which all elements are examined. It is not ‘you are 68 years old, I cross you off the list’, or ‘my income statement is 30,000 euros a year, you are no longer useful’. Everything comes together. In this case, the judge who intervened will have considered that it is possible to do so. Obregón, like everyone else, will have had to establish a legal guardian or two to ensure that this baby is not left defenseless. That is done with everyone, not just with a father or mother of intention of a high age ”. In AGAR (Association of Reproductive Assisted Gestation), which advises families interested in the process, they usually indicate that the optimum is not to reach 50 years at the beginning of the treatments.
On a personal note, Miramontes adds: “we get used to expressing opinions about the lives of others and we don’t know what we see. I do not know what Ana Obregón has in her house, I can only consider what I would do in her place, as a person who has lost her son in her twenties to cancer and has the possibility of returning to be a mother”.
“Do we need a photo to think about?” asks Sara Lafuente Funes, author of the book Reproductive Markets: Crisis, Desire and Inequality (Txalaparta). Although she acknowledges that a Hola cover can be “turned around” and take the opportunity to put pending issues on the table. “What we see in that image is a performance, and that is why it attracts so much attention. It’s like an imitation of the birthing process. I don’t think she’s choosing it, but it’s something we see in a lot of cases, a simulation of the biological process, a sort of genetic thing. It is an image that puts the question very front of you, among other things the issue of age ”. The important thing is not to censure a person who has a child at 68, she believes, but to ask what is happening with the reproductive age.
According to Lafuente, what cases like this one do is underline the obviousness that access to babies is being mediated by a market. But it’s important, he points out, not to look at the extremes, but rather at the most common practices. “Not all wishes have to be fulfilled. We have to enable ways to better address the reproductive issue and to address them socially. If I have a health problem and the only solution to cure myself is to buy an organ, I prefer not to make that decision. That is very clear to us. Well, with this, a collective decision must also be made that also includes the donation of gametes”.
The first battle in this matter is that of language. Supporters of legalizing the practice speak of “intentional or intentional mothers and fathers”, of “surrogacy” (which they consider to be within the human assisted reproduction techniques) and refer to the woman in charge of the pregnancy as “surrogate mother” –The website of Son Nuestros Hijos includes a glossary–.
On the contrary, those who oppose the system often prefer the crudeness of a term like “belly for rent” (Irene Montero spoke of women forced to “lend their wombs”) and refer to the whole process as “buying babies”. ”. Lafuente uses “surrogate pregnancy”, which is the term used by Spanish law, and does not usually say “mother” for pregnant women because they do not identify themselves as such. The term “womb for hire” strikes her as disrespectful to women who do such work for money. “The problem that I see when talking about surrogacy is that it focuses only on that, pregnancy, but the process is much broader, it involves hormone treatment and assisted reproduction, which often fails, a pregnancy that may not reach term, delivery and postpartum, beyond the management of separation “.
Finally, there is the purely legal question. As surrogacy is an illegal but not punishable practice, Ana Obregón will return to Spain shortly with her daughter in her arms and without excessive legal obstacles. Since 2010 there is a filiation sentence and those born in the United States are registered with the consulate and are automatically recognized.
Carlos Vilagrasa, professor of Civil Law at the UB and president of the Taula d’Infància i Adolescentes de Catalunya, describes this situation as a classic case of “forum shopping”, which happens when someone goes to another country in search of legislation. convenient (as what happened with Switzerland and euthanasia) and that the interest of the child born should always prevail: “If the slogan is launched that they are bought children, it is cruelty.”
Regarding pregnant women, he recognizes the risk of exploitation and is in favor of maintaining the situation of illegality in Spain. “In the conferences that I have given, for example at the Bar Association, I have met people who were to start trembling. A very old person who had no children who said that he had money to do it and was going to do it. Like the case of Carmen Bausada, who lied about her age, she had her children and finally died.
From the association Son Mis Hijos they welcome the proposal launched yesterday by the PP to legalize surrogacy but only in cases of altruistic gestation, eliminating the possibility of payment to the surrogate. “Let’s do it and try. In the United Kingdom altruistic gestation is possible and there are cases, there are children born. Remaining in the field of the theoretical, we will not know”. In the United Kingdom, 413 surrogate pregnancies occurred in 2020, the last year in which they were recorded, and, although it is recommended that the payment never exceed that of the surrogate’s medical expenses, in practice this figure has been increasing and the payment is not prosecutable by law.
