Guide To Surrogate Mother Or Surrogate Uterus; What Does The Law Say ?

Surrogate Mother Or Surrogate Uterus - According to LAW

Surrogacy

New medical technologies lead to many ethical, jurisprudential, and legal issues. Advanced methods of assisted reproduction during the years of their entry into the medical field have caused many legal questions,

Most of which have no definite answer and need to be researched. Fertility issues have more legal aspects than other therapies and techniques because they deal with the most specific aspects of human life. Currently, 10% of couples in the country are infertile, with the latest treatment being for only one to 2% using the "alternative uterus" method; This method has had a lot of legal talk in recent years, but unfortunately, this method of infertility treatment has faced a comprehensive legal loophole and is an obstacle. The Annual Ethics and Reproductive Rights Congress addresses the challenges of alternative therapies.

Therefore, we have talked to Dr. Kiarash Aramesh, the scientific secretary of the Congress and the research assistant of the Medical Ethics and History Research Center, to further explore the visible and hidden legal angles of this treatment method.

Mr. Doctor, many may have only heard the name of the surrogate uterus. Explain a little about this.

The surrogate womb, which I prefer to call the surrogate mother, is a method of assisted reproduction that helps a group of infertile couples whose wives are unable to conceive to have children. There are different types of alternative mothers, but the classic and complete type is that in a family, the couple has sperm and the wife also has an egg, so men and women can have children in terms of "gametes", but the wife either can not or does not want to. Go through the stages of pregnancy; Of course, in Iran, this method is less performed because the limb is not damaged. Therefore, more and more women are involved in this method who can not get pregnant due to a uterine abnormality or lack of uterus while their ovaries are healthy and able to produce eggs.

For this reason, in the laboratory, eggs are made and multiplied from a woman's egg and a man's sperm, and finally, the produced embryos are transferred to another person's uterus so that the woman can go through the pregnancy and after birth, the baby is delivered to the couple. to be given.

Why do you want to use the word surrogate mother instead of surrogate mother?

Man is not an organ, and a woman who becomes pregnant is not only her uterus involved in pregnancy but her whole being involved in pregnancy so that if one sees the process of pregnancy a woman realizes that a pregnant woman experiences not only the growth of a creature in her body but her heart. The mother's feelings and soul are associated with the baby. Some mothers even talk to the baby in their womb for a while, and when the baby kicks, they are happy and communicate with him. Thus, the interpretation of the surrogate uterus is rooted in the interpretation of the uterus, which is an old term belonging to the era of slavery, in which case the human uterus can be rented, while this action is not a fee and the human is not a member but the person who fetuses the fetus. She raises her womb and gives birth to a mother. The surrogate mother is compatible with human dignity because the method of human dignity is always the goal and should not be seen as a tool.

Is the use of a surrogate uterus common in some countries because of the unwillingness to conceive?

The issue of surrogate mothers in developed countries for which they have a law is different from other countries such as Iran. In these countries, there is no place for commercial substitution, which I also agree with, meaning that no woman should be replaced by receiving her mother's money. Even in some countries, its commercial form is strictly forbidden. In some developed countries, the performance of a surrogate mother is permitted only for altruistic purposes. Of course, in Iran, unfortunately, there is a commercial type; That is, a woman receives money in exchange for keeping another couple's fetus. Developed countries, on the other hand, believe that a couple who can not have children should not find someone to play the role of a surrogate mother. Instead, they should find an old friend, sister, or even mother who is willing to do so.

What are the requirements for a fetal carrier or a woman who plays the role of a surrogate mother?

There are 2 categories of conditions; One is technical and medical conditions and the other is legal and jurisprudential conditions; This means that this person must be at an age when he can bear the pregnancy and have the necessary physical ability. In the jurisprudential and legal dimension, for example, now in our country, married women who have already experienced pregnancy can play the role of a surrogate mothers.

Legally, is embryo donation as legal a substitute as legal weakness?

there is a law for embryo donation in the country, which is not a good, comprehensive, and barrier law. While unfortunately  there is no law at all for the surrogate mother, the question is whether there must be a law for every treatment that enters the medical field? The answer is no. For example, new treatments and surgeries are invented every day, so the law must be written for each one! But in general, when a new treatment is not applicable under the previous laws and is challenging, it is necessary to either amend the previous laws or pass a new law for it.

For example, one of the legal requirements for the surrogate mother's method of assisted reproduction is that when a child is born in this way, the surrogate couple intends to have their name on the child's birth certificate. In other words, the name of the biological mother and not the maternity mother should be mentioned in the child's birth certificate, but at present, the registry office writes the mother's name based on the hospital certificate and the hospital assumes the woman who gave birth as the mother. So, in practice, the centers that do surrogate mothers do something illegal to solve this problem and admit the delivery mother in the hospital as a biological mother, but in general, this ambiguity arises in the lineage of the child as to who the mother is. ; Is it a biological mother or a maternity mother?

Anyway, Mr. Doctor, who is the mother of the child morally and legally?

In principle, the mother of the child is the biological mother, but if the donation of the gamete is the original because the donor is the biological mother, she is the real mother of the child, but if the maternity mother is the original, the discussion will not be very simple. Of course, in my opinion, they are both mothers, but the mother who is supposed to raise the child from the beginning has priority and is considered the main mother. A woman who has given birth and been involved in having a baby but does not want to raise the baby will be the baby's second mother. Therefore, in Article 15 of the Civil Registration Law, the birth registration must be documented by a doctor or midwife with the institution where the child was born, otherwise, the incident will be registered by two witnesses. - A note should be added to solve this problem