On 21–22 August, women’s rights advocates, people with lived experience, researchers, legal and human-rights contributors and others gathered in Melbourne for the national conference In the Name of the Child: The Perils of Surrogate Motherhood for Mother and Baby.
The conference was organised by ARMS — Association Representing Mothers Separated by Adoption — and brought together surrogate mothers, mothers separated from children by adoption, adults born through surrogacy and donor conception, adoptees and commissioning parents. International perspectives included UN Special Rapporteur Reem Alsalem. Women Speak Australia attended and reported on the conference at the time.
The conference examined an often-missing perspective: what does surrogacy mean for the woman who carries the pregnancy and the child born from the arrangement?
From discussion to a national declaration
The Melbourne Declaration to Abolish Surrogacy emerged from the conference, drawing on the contributions and perspectives of women’s advocacy organisations and conference delegates.
It represents a collective call for Federal, State and Territory governments to move beyond the question of how surrogacy should be regulated and consider whether it should be permitted at all.
The Declaration calls for the abolition of surrogacy in all forms — whether described as commercial, compensated, altruistic, reimbursed or otherwise.
Its starting point is that no woman should be recruited, pressured, coerced or otherwise enabled to carry a child for transfer to others, and no person should commission or acquire a child through surrogacy.
It rejects the idea that an adult’s desire to become a parent creates an entitlement to a child, another woman’s reproductive capacity, or the separation of a child from their mother.
The debate has often focused on the distinction between commercial and altruistic surrogacy, and on whether sufficient safeguards can make the practice acceptable. The Declaration challenges that premise.
The child cannot be an afterthought
A central concern of the Declaration is the child.
It places the best interests of the child at the centre and recognises the importance of identity, origins, nationality, family connections and legal protection.
The rights of children already born through surrogacy must be protected. But protecting those children does not mean society must continue creating children through the same arrangements.
Children should not be treated as objects of contract or transfer. Their rights to identity, origins and family connections must be taken seriously.
The lessons of history
The Declaration also draws a connection with Australia’s history of forced adoption.
Australia has acknowledged the profound and sometimes lifelong consequences experienced by mothers and children separated through adoption. The Declaration argues that planned, anticipated or formally arranged separation does not necessarily remove the potential for harm.
This raises an important question for law reform: what happens when an adult’s desire to obtain a child is placed ahead of the relationship between a mother and her baby?
Law reform should not repeat past assumptions that adult interests can justify planned separation.
Australia now has a choice
The Australian Law Reform Commission has undertaken a review of surrogacy in Australia. The Government’s response, and any subsequent policy or legislative changes, remain to be seen.
Whatever recommendations emerge, the answer should not be assumed to be greater regulation, consistency or additional safeguards.
There is another legitimate position: abolition.
Women Speak Australia believes that position deserves serious consideration, with the rights and interests of women and children placed at the centre of the debate.
Women Speak Australia signs the Declaration
Women Speak Australia has signed the Melbourne Declaration to Abolish Surrogacy.
The Declaration was signed by Dr Elizabeth Caballero, Founder and National President of Women Speak Australia and President of Women Speak Tasmania, on behalf of both organisations.
We encourage other women’s organisations, child-rights advocates, community organisations, professionals, parliamentarians and individuals to read the Declaration and consider supporting it.
The national debate about surrogacy should not begin and end with the question of how to regulate it. Sometimes the more important question is whether the practice itself should continue.
Women Speak Australia believes it should not.
Want to support the Declaration?
If you wish to sign the Melbourne Declaration to Abolish Surrogacy, please contact ARMS.
Contact ARMS and sign the Declaration
Read the full declaration below