“Ana Obregón, Mother Of Girl Born By Surrogacy Aged 68,” announced Wednesday’s ABC headline. The news, spread by the magazine “Hola!”, quickly triggered a chain of political and social reactions about a practice illegal in Spain, but which has not prevented thousands of Spaniards from exploiting it in other countries where it is legal. , as the well-known presenter and actress did. However, amid the controversy, not many people know that the debate has a thousand-year history.
Simply put, surrogacy, also known as “surrogacy,” is a process whereby a woman goes through the entire process of becoming pregnant and giving birth to a boy or girl to another person or couple, invoking legal rights the baby renounces the time of birth. In Spain, Article 10 of Law 14/2006, which makes it very clear that this is not allowed, is: “The contract by which the pregnancy is agreed, with or without price, by a woman who renounces the maternal relationship in favor of the contractual partner or a third party”.
In other words, the only legal way to have someone else’s child in this country is through adoption. But who first spoke about surrogacy and what was said about it? Mentions of this practice are found in Genesis, the first book of the Old Testament, where it says: “And Rachel [esposa de Jacob] He said: ‘Behold my servant Bilha; Come into her and she will give birth on my knees, and I too will have children by her.’ He gave Bilhah his maid to wife, and Jacob went in to her. And Bilhah bore Jacob a son.”
This reference is neither the oldest nor the only one in the Bible that refers to what is now called surrogacy. An example is Sarah, Abraham’s wife, who, unable to conceive, borrows her servant Hagar to give birth to a son. He called it Ishmael. “There are other similar stories in Genesis from which the legitimacy of surrogate mothers cannot be derived, although it is undeniable that the possibility of pregnancy by other women to have a child, taking advantage of their poor conditions, has always existed.” , explains Eleonore Lamm in her article “Surrogacy. Bibliographic Review’ (University of Cantabria, 2013).
Hammurabi Code
There are also records of surrogacy programs in ancient Mesopotamia from the mid-18th century BC. C. Among the Sumerians it was customary to clench bellies legally. King Hammurabi’s code, which is considered to be the oldest law, was the first to regulate the matter: it stipulated that the barren woman who wanted children could give her husband a slave so that he could live without him she procreated. Another concubine could be found until he conceived a male child with her. In addition, surrogate mothers who could not be sold “for money” would be protected in this process.
The inability to produce offspring was also addressed in ancient Rome, but only for noble marriages. In this case, when the newlyweds discovered that one of the spouses was infertile, they turned to friends or family to help them have children. The couple used to go to a cousin, sister or close friend who had already given birth to commit to having another one for her. The only condition was to swear eternal friendship and, above all, to offer the mother, who had given up her womb, a series of altruistic gifts that could be as valuable as a big house on the beach.
Weeks before the child was conceived, that friend or relative moved into the beneficiary’s home to be cared for by their GPs until the birth of their child. “She gave birth there and at birth the baby was immediately given to the second couple, the biological mother renounced him forever,” Paco Álvarez told ABC four years ago after the release of Somos Romanos (Edaf, 2019 ). , an essay on ancient Rome that doubled as a genetic study.
Roman relief depicting a midwife helping a woman give birth
Ancient Rome
“Surrogate mothering” was a common practice in ancient Rome, but only the nobility had sufficient financial resources to access it. A situation that sometimes still occurs today. According to data provided by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to ABC through the Transparency Portal, since 2010, Spain has registered 2,350 minors born abroad through surrogacy. Most of them came from Ukraine, a country where, until before the war, heterosexual Spanish couples who could not have children participated and where the process costs around 50,000 euros.
Spain also has many registered babies born in the United States, where regulations vary from state to state, allowing some homosexual couples or single people access to this technique. The cost is much higher, on average over 100,000 euros. In the case of Ana Obregón, there is talk of 150,000 euros. In ancient Rome, too, this practice was a luxury that few could afford, partly because the nobles had to pay for their sons’ political careers.
“Couples with two children have rarely been able to give both of them a chance to pursue a political career,” clarified Álvarez, who then staged a Roman’s call to his best friend: “Hey, look, my wife isn’t getting pregnant and you have already two children… Would you mind if the next child you have was from us?». In this most primitive version of the “rental mothers” lay the greatest token of friendship between powerful citizens of the Roman Empire.
American Civil War
The first case in the United States, the country where Ana Obregón and other Spanish women gave birth to their children through surrogacy, was found in the pre-civil war period, in the mid-19th century. In his article “The Surrogacy Contract: The American Experience” (‘Valdivia’ Magazine, 2012) Camilo Rodríguez-Yong and Karol Ximena Martínez-Muñoz say that many slaves of the period gave birth to babies that later belonged to their masters to work on their land as they grew up.
The first surrogacy using artificial insemination was not documented until 1976. She was sponsored by Noel Keane, a Michigan (USA) attorney who founded Surrogate Family Service Inc, a support organization for couples experiencing difficulties in pregnancy, which facilitated access to contract mothers and was responsible for conducting all necessary procedures. In fact, it was he who coined the term “contracted surrogacy” to refer to “surrogacy.”
The first globally reported case of pregnancy by total substitution occurred in 1986, when embryos obtained from a woman without a uterus were transferred to those of a friend. She gave birth to a baby who bore no genetic relation to her and who would henceforth be known as Baby M. A day after the birth of the newborn, the mother who rented her womb regretted it and tried to get it back. In 1987, a judge upheld the surrogacy agreement, although the New Jersey Supreme Court revoked it a year later. However, he retained custody of the non-biological parents.
Due to the fallout from the Baby M case, the state of Michigan passed legislation outlawing surrogacy entirely, and Keane closed his clinic to open the same business in other states. It was not bad for him, because between 1976 and 1997 he mediated around 600 contracts for which he asked $ 20,000 each, half of it for the pregnant woman. In addition, the client had to pay an additional $5,000 for medical expenses.
