The petition created by the No Maternity Traffic[1] group, presented on 10 March 2016 to the President of the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly was “deemed admissible during the official meeting on 26 May 2016”. Consequently, the petition will be forwarded to the Commission for Social Affairs and will be “taken into consideration when drafting the Human Rights’ report and focusing on ethical questions relating to surrogacy”.
This petition, which was signed by 107,957 people, “calls on Council of Europe organisations to join forces to abolish and effectively ban the practice of surrogacy” because “regardless of its form, surrogacy exploits women and leads to the trafficking of children who are fully or partly deprived of their parentage”.
This decision was taken following the rejection of the draft report presented by Belgian MP, Petra de Sutter, on 15 March 2016 (see Council of Europe rejects report on “ethical” surrogacy). The Commission’s work is continuing but No Maternity Traffic “is worried because the rapporteur has not been replaced”.
In France, two draft laws proposed by MPs Valérie Boyer and Philippe Gosselin, and jointly signed by numerous MPs, will be discussed on 16 June at the National Assembly. The first highlights the criminal aspect of resorting to surrogacy whilst the second is intended to constitutionalise the principle of the non-availability of the human body.
[1] European group of associations in favour of abolishing surrogacy. (see Denouncing the development of an international market for the sale of children through surrogacy).
No Maternity Traffic (1/06/2016)