Three years later, he remains in contact with the baby’s parents, whom he has even visited a couple of times in Spain, and they occasionally share video calls to maintain the connection between Edward and his surrogate.
Nathalie works by connecting potential surrogates with agencies dedicated to assisted reproduction, from which she has referred around 80 women and has independently managed around 18 surrogacy processes, in addition to sharing her experience on her Tiktok account.
How does surrogacy work?
Surrogacy is when a person with the ability to bear a child agrees with a third party or parties – parents or intended ascendants – to carry a pregnancy to term. This may be with the surrogate’s own egg (homologous) or with the egg and sperm of third parties (heterologous).
In Mexico it is regulated only in two states of the country, Tabasco and Sinaloa, where it is required that the intentional ascendants are a married couple. On the contrary, in Coahuila and Querétaro have civil codes that do not recognize the validity of agreements for this type of gestation. and they attribute motherhood only to the pregnant woman.
The Mexico City –like the rest of the 27 entities in the country– does not have any regulation, which is why Babies born through this means must go through legal proceedings and protectionsin order to legalize paternity or maternity.
In the capital’s Congress, an initiative presented by deputy Temístocles Villanueva proposes creating the ‘Regulatory Law of Assisted Reproduction Agreements’, which includes the regulation of surrogate gestation.
The proposal presented in May of this year includes that lthe pregnant woman is at least 25 years old, has been a mother on at least one previous occasion and is guaranteed an appropriate environment in which to carry out the pregnancy, as well as receiving the agreed compensation.
While ascendants – mothers or fathers – of intention are recognized the right to witness the birth, in addition to receiving the resources disbursed in case the surrogate puts the pregnancy at risk and causes the interruption.
It also establishes that surrogacy processes must be based on an agreement of wills through a Family Orality Judge, since it is currently limited to a private contract between the people.
“We believe that a contract between private individuals does not provide any certainty to the pregnant person, so we established a jurisdictional process: to inform the Judicial Branch of Mexico City of the process that is being carried out and for the judge to establish the parameters to provide security and rights to the pregnant person and also to provide certainty to the ascendants, to the family that seeks to access assisted reproduction,” explains the legislator who presented the initiative.
This is not the first initiative. In 2022, two proposals – one from Morena, the other from the PRD – sought to regulate this method of reproduction, however, protests by feminist groups with slogans such as “women are not merchandise” and “no to surrogacy” managed to stop the discussion.
