Spain bans registration of overseas surrogate births

Madrid: Spain’s left-wing government published a decree on Thursday banning the registering of births of babies born abroad to surrogate mothers, a practice outlawed in the country under a 2006 law.

The directive requires people who have obtained a child from a surrogate mother to prove a biological link to themselves or else formally adopt the child in order to record its birth in the civil register.

Certificates or court orders issued by foreign countries “will not be accepted under any circumstances” by civil registrars in such cases, said the decree, published in Spain’s official journal.

Spain’s Supreme Court ruled in December that a child’s interests should be determined by Spanish “values” rather than “the interests of those who commission a surrogate pregnancy”.

Surrogacy, paid or unpaid, is illegal in Spain under a law passed in 2006 -- but that legislation had until now allowed citizens to register overseas surrogate births on the strength of a foreign court order accrediting the child’s parentage. A later law adopted in February 2024 branded surrogacy a form of “violence against women”.