The Australian Catholic Bishops Conference has told the Australian Law Reform Commission (ALRC) that all forms of surrogacy are “unacceptable” and called for stronger enforcement of the country’s ban on overseas commercial surrogacy.
The ALRC is undertaking a view of the surrogacy laws, which vary among the states, although commercial surrogacy, where the woman bearing and giving birth to a child for another couple is paid for doing so, is currently illegal within Australia.
However in New South Wales, which has its own surrogacy inquiry underway, changes to surrogacy laws made under last year’s “equality” legislation allow people who secured a child via overseas surrogacy to potentially obtain a parentage order when they return home.
In a nine-page submission to ALRC president Justice Mordecai Bromberg and assistant commissioner Associate Professor Ronli Sifris, Bishop Tony Percy, the bishop delegate for life, marriage and family, called for the commission to recommend banning all forms of surrogacy in Australia, including so-called “altruistic” surrogacy.
The bishops also expressed concern the terms of reference for the ALRC’s review into Australia’s surrogacy laws are framed to push for easier access to the practice, warning there is “no regulatory framework that can eliminate the inherent harms” of surrogacy.
“While the pain of infertility is real and deserving of compassion, not all responses to suffering are just. Surrogacy introduces new and profound harms,” the submission says.
“It places women and children at heightened medical risk, causes enduring emotional trauma, and opens the door to exploitation.
“For children, it breaches core human rights, including identity, parentage, and protection from commodification, which are rights affirmed by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.
“Australian law should, as far as possible, preserve the inherent dignity of every human person by giving paramount importance to the rights of children, and protect vulnerable women from exploitation and harm.
“Children have no voice in these arrangements, yet it is they who bear the most profound consequences. The law must protect their right to be conceived, carried, and raised in a context where they are received in love, not produced as part of a contractual arrangement.”