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Media can report on High Court surrogacy case
The High Court
has said that the media can report on a landmark case regarding an
attempt to recognise 
surrogacy under Irish law.
The genetic
parents of two children born to a surrogate mother have taken a case to
be recognised as the children's parents on their birth certificates, the
Irish Independent reports.
The surrogate mother is supporting
the couple's application for declaration of parentage, which is being
taken under the Status of Children Act 1987 and the Guardianship of
Infants Act 1964.
However the Office of the Attorney General
and the Office of the Register of Births, Deaths and Marriages have
opposed their bid to be declared the children's parents on their birth
certificates.
Surrogacy involves gestating a baby in another
woman's womb. The surrogate mother may or may not be the genetic mother
as well. A number of Irish couples have used foreign surrogate mothers,
usually from India, Ukraine and America.
Presently, in such
situations, Irish law recognises the birth mother as the mother for
legal purposes. This is the case even if the woman contracting the
arrangement with the surrogate mother has donated the egg, and is the
biological mother.
The Government-appointed Commission for
Assisted Human Reproduction recommended in 2005 that in surrogacy
arrangements, the commissioning parents be deemed to be the legal
parents.
No action has been taken by successive Governments
since. Commissioning fathers must establish paternity and apply for
guardianship through the Circut Court.
Austria, Germany and
Italy, among other countries, ban the use of donated eggs because they
believe it is wrong to split motherhood between a birth mother (possibly
a surrogate mother), a genetic mother (that is the egg donor), and even
a social mother (that is someone who is neither the birth mother nor
the genetic mother but who raises the child).
Austrian law seeks
to ensure that medically assisted procreation takes place similarly to
natural procreation, and that the basic principle of civil law, that it
is always clear who the mother is, should be maintained by avoiding the
possibility that two persons could claim to be the biological mother.
A
recent ruling by the European Court of Human Rights held that Austria,
in maintaining this principle, was not in breach of the European
Convention of Human Rights.
Last February, Justice Minister Alan
Shatter published new guidelines for people who have used surrogate
mothers abroad to advise them on their legal rights and how to obtain a
passport for the child they bring home.
The guidelines do not
consider such ethical issues as whether surrogacy is inherently
exploitative or whether motherhood should be ‘split’ between a birth
mother and a biological mother (the egg donor).
The guidelines
state that, if the mother is married, her husband is presumed to be the
father whether or not he is the sperm donor.
The guidelines also
state that, under Irish law, family responsibilities cannot be subject
to the law of contract and cannot be bought or sold. “The surrogate
mother and the child will have a lifelong relationship with each other,”
it says.
Yesterday, Mr Justice Henry Abbott issued an order,
revising an earlier ruling in which he excluded the media from reporting
the case, setting out the terms under which the case may be partially
reported.
The papers stated that they did not wish to publish anything that would identify or would tend to identify the parties.
The papers also undertook not to cover the private evidence of the parties.
The Office of the Attorney General had opposed any reporting of the case.
