Download This PaperCross-Border Surrogacy: Time for a Convention?
Boele-Woelki/Dethloff/Gephart (eds.): Family Law and Culture in Europe: Developments, Challenges and Opportunities; Proceedings of the Fifth Conference of the Commission on European Family Law; Intersentia 2014, pp. 199-217
22 Pages Posted: 4 Nov 2013 Last revised: 12 Jul 2016
Date Written: October 31, 2013
Abstract
As the law of parentage is striving to meet the challenges of new reproductive technologies, dealing with cross-border surrogacies emerges as one of the most pressing topics in international family law. The current legal situation as regards surrogacy is quite diverse – throughout the world but also within Europe. Legal diversity has recently made a lot of people engage in so-called “procreative tourism”: Coming from a country with a rather strict approach, they commission women in one of the more liberal countries to carry a child for them, and once the baby is born, they try to take it to their home country, thereby obviating the surrogacy ban that prevents them from entrusting a surrogate mother at home. European courts struggle with a coherent approach on how to treat those citizens who went abroad to have a baby. Meanwhile, legal research and the Hague Conference on Private International Law think about a convention in order to ease cross-border recognition of surrogacy.
Keywords: Surrogacy, Parentage, Motherhood, Procreative Tourism, Legal Arbitrage, Best Interests, European Union, Hague Convention, Adoption, Recognition
JEL Classification: I11, I18, I31, J12, J13, J18, K19, K32, K33, K49
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