The bill to ban surrogacy in Colombia will undergo the first of four required debates in the coming days, Rep. Luis Miguel López Aristizábal, the bill’s author, announced.
“The proposal for the bill that would ban ‘rent-a-womb’ or surrogacy in Colombia has just been formally submitted. This means that in the next few days, we will hold the first of the four debates that this bill requires,” the congressman from the Conservative Party stated.
The bill was introduced in mid-August in response to calls from the Constitutional Court in four separate rulings to enact legislation regarding surrogacy, an area currently lacking legal regulation, which is being exploited by private clinics, with “direct consequences for the fundamental rights of the women who carry the pregnancies and the children born through this practice.”
On his social media, López stated that “the lobbying by clinics has been truly incredible; however, we believe that the majority of Colombians support this bill. And not just that, I hope it will be passed unanimously in the Congress of the Republic, as it has the backing of various voting blocs.”
“We need this to be prohibited quickly to protect our children and women — after all, what is the value of a baby? Naturally, it is priceless, because a child is not a product, and a woman cannot be rented,” the legislator remarked.
What the bill proposes
López noted that “the bill does not criminalize the pregnant woman; rather, it protects her and directs sanctions toward those who promote, facilitate, finance, or organize this practice.”
To this end, the bill establishes the criminal offense of “reproductive exploitation through surrogacy” with or without payment involved and imposes penalties on those who promote, facilitate, finance, or organize such practices, with punishments consisting of “120 to 192 months [10 to 16 years] in prison and fines ranging from 500 to 1,500 times the minimum wage, with aggravating circumstances applicable in cases involving the vulnerability of the woman.”
These sanctions also apply to Colombian citizens abroad who have fully or partially engaged in surrogacy.
In addition to protecting the surrogate mother from having to return any payments received, the bill establishes that, “for all legal purposes, the mother of the children conceived or born in Colombia is the woman who carries and gives birth to them.”
This story was first published by EWTN News Español, the Spanish-language sister service of EWTN News. It has been translated and adapted by EWTN News English.
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