MOSCOW, May 15 (RIA Novosti) – A draft Russian law limiting commercial surrogacy should be discussed with the expert community, Russia's children's rights ombudsman Pavel Astakhov told RIA Novosti Wednesday.
“Before restricting anything, we have to discuss this issue and listen to what all parties, the expert community, have to say,” Astakhov said.
“We don’t understand at all what threat surrogacy poses to future generations. This is one aspect of the issue. Another question is that commercialization of producing of children, that’s what it looks like, always leads to a lot of problems, ethical, social and human ones,” the ombudsman added.
Astakhov cited the example of India, where some women earn a livelihood by working as producers of surrogate children, he said.
Russia has not yet taken any legal steps to regulate surrogacy so far, he added.
“There are lots of disputed issues and more problems than good there. Judging from the appeals I receive, I see that there is a lot of problems in this sphere but they have be resolved by professionals,” he said.
Experts earlier told RIA Novosti that commercial surrogacy should not be restricted because the ban will strip many Russian couples from their only chance of having biological children.
Surrogacy, including in commercial form, is legal in most US states, South Africa and Ukraine. Altruistic surrogacy is legal in Australia, the UK, Israel, Spain, Canada and Denmark, where it is severely limited.
Last month, Elena Mizulina, the head of the Committee for Women and the Family in Russia’s lower house of parliament, supported a restriction on commercial surrogacy due to the large number of problems the practice causes. The main goal of the draft law is to introduce regulatiosn on surrogacy and limit its use to infertile couples.
