Turkey to toughen laws on surrogacy
The URL is more graphic than the headline:
http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2017/09/turkey-to-introduce-jail-for-surrogate-mothers.html
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Under the present law, surrogate motherhood is in a gray area. The 282/1 article of the Turkish Civil Code says that the relationship between mother and child is established through birth. This means that surrogate motherhood “has no basis in Turkish law” and that the surrogate mother is the mother. Should a couple try to have a child by a surrogate mother, establishing parenthood becomes a legal muddle. In vitro fertilization, on the other hand, is possible, and there are regulations in the Turkish bylaws about Assisted Reproduction and Infertility Centers, which can be used by married couples only.
If they want to have a child through a surrogate mother, most Turks simply choose to go abroad and come back with a baby, which they have registered under the name of the genetic parents. There are numerous stories about
couples who go to Northern Cyprus, Ukraine or Georgia, where surrogacy is legal. Allegedly, the price for the process varies from $40,000 to $70,000. A simple
Google search results in a list of websites of companies that
advertise surrogate motherhood as part of their services. Turkish media has in the past published
some personal stories of women who decided to become surrogate mothers in Northern Cyprus, describing the process and explaining the uneasy choices and decisions.
But the new law, reported by Hurriyet journalist
Meltem Ozgenc, aims to fill in the gray area and ban surrogate motherhood altogether, including abroad, by Turkish citizens. It also bans “mediation,” “assistance,” “encouragement” or “advertisement” for surrogacy.
According to information that Al-Monitor has obtained, several provisions will be added to the current Law No. 2238 on the “Harvesting, Storage, Grafting, and Transplantation of Organs and Tissues.” The revision of the law is expected to pass within the scope of one of the
upcoming decrees by the power of law — the main ruling mechanism since the government declared a
state of emergency in July 2016 after the attempted coup.
The
new draft law says: “Having a child or serving as a surrogate mother is banned if the pregnancy is undertaken through the reproductive cells taken from one or both of the partners, or if the embryo acquired from these cells are inseminated into others.”
According to the Hurriyet Daily News, the new draft law prohibits “undertaking a donation procedure to use someone else’s reproductive cells or embryo, as well as to donate, sell, use, stock, transfer, import and export reproductive cells or embryos for this purpose.”
The draft’s last paragraph adds that the penalties foreseen in the law are applicable even if the surrogacy takes place in a country where it is legal.
Besides introducing prison time between two to five years for those involved in surrogate motherhood, the law also
clarifies legal eligibility for in vitro fertilization. More precisely, the additions to the existing legislation would confirm that the in vitro fertilization process could be applied if the couple cannot have a child in natural ways and if there is a medical necessity. Yet the procedure would be allowed just for married couples, and it can only be performed in licensed centers and by medical professionals granted authority by the Ministry of Health.
The emphasis on married couples is undoubtedly in line with mainstream Sunni religious interpretations of Islam in Turkey, as the statements by the country’s top religious affairs body have confirmed in the past. In 2015, the High Council’s platform of the Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet) said that in vitro fertilization
between unmarried individuals “offended humane feelings and contained elements of adultery.” At the same time,
it was stated that surrogate motherhood is also deemed religiously unacceptable, as it is viewed to contain elements of adultery. This view has been confirmed by some prominent religious figures, including
Hayrettin Karaman and
renowned televangelists such as
Nihat Hatipoglu.
The adultery argument is a common basis for banning surrogacy within Sunni Islam, as the sperm of a man is introduced into the uterus of a woman other than his wife, which is prohibited by
verses in the Quran. Other reasons for banning surrogacy, according to Ruaim Muaygil, are “
preservation of lineage, exclusion of third parties in reproduction, upholding the rights of the child and protection from the negative effects of surrogacy.” On the other hand, more progressive professionals and scholars such as Muaygil clarify between traditional and gestational surrogacy, and use Islamic law and bioethics alongside medical evidence to show that “surrogacy is not only consistent with Sunni Islamic teachings, but is also both ethically justified and medically necessary.”
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