Surrogacy, Intermediaries, and the Sale of Children paper – drafted by David Smolin and Maud de Boer-Buquicchio
To be published in an upcoming Research Handbook on Surrogacy (eds. Katarina Trimmings, Sharon Shakargy & Claire Achmad; Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd), this paper written by David Smolin (CHIP advisor) and Maud de Boer-Buquicchio (CHIP president), explains among other things the link between commercial surrogacy, sale of children including their identity (i.e. parentage, parental responsibility). The abstract notes the following “this work applies international child rights norms to contemporary practices of surrogacy: especially commercial surrogacy. The work analyzes the interrelationship between the rights of the child not to be sold, and other rights of the child, and the ways in which commercial surrogacy as currently practiced systemically and simultaenously violates multiple rights of the child. Further, commercial surrogacy as currently practiced may undermine the foundational norm of children as rights-bearing human persons. While surrogacy and the sale of children are often analyzed primarily in terms of an interaction between the intending parents and surrogate mother (or gestational carrier), this work extends the traditional analysis to focus on the primary role of intermediaries. The work describes circumstances under which intermediaries may be primarily responsible as sellers of children to intending parents, and circumstances under which intermediaries may be secondarily complicit in the sale of children. The work concludes that researchers should focus more attention on the role of intermediaries. Further, states should focus enforcement and regulatory efforts primarily on intermediaries, who primarily structure commercial surrogacy markets.”
