The Ana Obregón case has caused a real earthquake that has reached the Congress of Deputies. Surrogacy (those opposed to this practice call it surrogate wombs) has fully entered the social and political debate, despite the fact that it is not a new path in terms of achieving motherhood and fatherhood for some ( among them, also famous and rich).
Nor is it a new issue in Congress, where it has been discussed extensively on numerous occasions (most recently, with the passage of abortion law reform, which includes a ban on surrogacy agencies ), with the sole support of Ciutadans. Nor is it new in the judicial sphere, where even the Supreme Court (the last time, in 2022) has expressed itself conclusively and without leaving any doubt about what it thinks of the surrogacy contract : “It involves damage to the interest of the minor and an exploitation of the woman that are unacceptable; both are treated as simple objects, not as people endowed with the dignity of their condition as human beings”.
With the news that Ana Obregón has resorted to surrogacy to be a mother, the debate has been revived (tempered by her age, 68 years old) although behind all the fuss that has been generated, the reality is that regulation will not be faced, at least not in the short term. Because no party, except Citizens, has any intention of reopening the debate. Not even the PP, which in the midst of the noise of the news pretended to be open to debating "altruistic" surrogacy (without payment to the expectant mother apart from the expenses this entails).
The debate will not be addressed in this legislature, which will soon end, but also in the next one, whatever the result, acknowledge the PSOE, Podem, PP and Vox MPs consulted by this newspaper. And it is that all of them, who reject this practice, do not want to open a debate that they do not know where it can lead.
And this despite being aware of the degree of inconsistency involved in considering this type of pregnancy illegal in Spain (the 2006 Law on Assisted Human Reproduction Techniques), but at the same time it is legalized through the registration of the creatures in the Civil Registry. The crime goes unpunished because it is carried out in countries where it is legal (court or consular documentation is required to support it) and, once here, the registration of children cannot be prevented following the guidelines of the European Court of Human Rights ( HDH). In fact, France has been condemned on several occasions for not allowing the filiation of these children, arguing that refusing to recognize the biological filiation of children with their parents for having resorted to this technique would go against the fundamental right respect for private life enshrined in the European Convention on Human Rights.
The majority of Congress, at this moment, hopes that the debate on surrogacy will once again be relegated to the oblivion of the public for a while, although they recognize that it will not be easy. The pink press will not stop reporting on Ana Obregón.
