Argentina is investigating recruiting surrogate mothers and selling babies abroad

Argentina’s judiciary is investigating the creation of an illegal transnational corporation dedicated to exploiting women’s bodies through surrogacy and then selling the babies.

The National Public Prosecutor’s Office for Criminal and Correctional Affairs, led by María Alejandra Mángano, has requested a series of searches and warrants in clinics, notary offices and law firms in the city of Buenos Aires, the province of Buenos Aires and the province of Santa Fe. The requests are part of a case that began in January and on which Mángano is working with the state anti-trafficking agency PROTEX.

The judiciary is targeting four fertility centers in the capital and two in the city of Rosario, where pregnant women underwent fertility treatments and in vitro procedures. In general, these centers worked with intermediaries for the clients and pregnant women. Authorities conducted searches to obtain medical records and bills.

They are also investigating seven notary offices where pregnant women signed their written consent before the procedure and during delivery. The seizure of notarial records and protocols, as well as signature certificates relating to the cases, was ordered.

Proceedings were also carried out in three law firms representing the pregnant women or the clients, and orders were sent to five maternity hospitals in Buenos Aires City where the women had given birth.

Individuals and companies based abroad but operating in Argentina are said to have participated and made significant profits, judicial sources told the newspaper Herald‘s sister title, Ambito.

The Human Trafficking and Cybercrime departments of the Federal Police carried out the operations simultaneously.

The individuals and legal entities subject to the investigation advertised their services abroad. Couples who wanted children contacted them and were offered a “service” called the “Argentina Program,” which cost about $50,000. This included selecting the surrogate mother, acquiring the embryos to be implanted, the treatment itself, regular pregnancy checks and the birth of the baby.

Recruitment of surrogates

The other side of this ‘business’ is the recruitment of surrogates. Companies approached poor women via social media. They offered them $10,000 to carry out a pregnancy, with a “bonus” of $1,000 to $2,000 if they gave birth by cesarean section.

If the pregnancy was interrupted for any reason, the companies refused to make the payments, with the exception of the minimum monthly costs already paid.

Sources with knowledge of the matter claim that these organizations took advantage of the women by offering them $10,000 in exchange for everything needed to induce a pregnancy, carry out the pregnancy with all the associated checks and the to hand over baby. when it was born.

The physical and emotional consequences for the women, as the case makes clear, were not taken into account.

According to sources, the ultimate goal was to register the children and then hand them over to the couples. To this end, the companies involved took advantage of “the lack of supervision in the local regulations of the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires, which ensured that births would be registered even if the surrogate mothers lived and underwent treatment in other provinces.”

“This entire sophisticated business scheme was set up for the sole purpose of the birth of a boy or girl so that they could be delivered to a couple who, in many cases, were foreign and did not live in the country, and with whom they had no relationship. genetic, cultural or social ties.”

A place of reproductive tourism

The agencies that select surrogate mothers, the agencies that contact foreigners who want to become parents, fertility clinics and notaries all seem to be motivated solely by profit.

“They take advantage of the socio-economic needs that countless women in our country may face, as well as the weak national regulations in this area and the registration system in the city of Buenos Aires, to make Argentina a place of ‘reproductive tourism’ where couples from mainly developed countries, without legal or socio-cultural ties, come to our country solely for the purpose of registering and then returning to their country of origin with a child.”

The Public Prosecutor’s Office is treating the case as a human trafficking investigation (in accordance with Article 145 bis of the Argentine Criminal Code), as it believes that the persons under investigation are routinely involved in a criminal enterprise dedicated to the recruitment of women , many of whom are poor and vulnerable. to subject them to exploitation akin to servitude through surrogacy.

This was done in exchange for payment and in some cases endangered their health.

The prosecutor also argued that this crime applies to the sale of children, as this treatment involves reducing them to a situation equivalent to slavery.

The buying and selling of human beings constitutes a crime enshrined in Article 15 of the Argentine Constitution, which states that “any contract for the buying and selling of persons is a crime for which those who participate in it, as well as the notary or official who undertakes engages in it, authorizes it, will be held accountable.”

The case also involves crimes against public trust, a category of crimes that also includes forgery, as it involves making false statements in public documents. This would have been the case with the agreements between the surrogates and the clients submitted by notaries to the Buenos Aires Civil Registry.

Case 1 and the German woman

The case began on January 25, after the head of the Argentine Foreign Ministry’s litigation department reported the situation to the Federal Court.

German child protection services notified the Argentine consulate in the city of Bonn that a 58-year-old German woman had gone to her local hospital to request medical attention for a three-month-old girl born in Argentina. She provided proof of her relationship with the baby by showing a birth certificate issued by the Civil Registry of the City of Buenos Aires and an Argentine passport.

The German official warned that the girl was in extremely poor health and that the woman who took her to the emergency room was unable to provide the care she needed. So she notified the local police, temporarily revoked custody of the baby and placed her in the care of a foster family.

The investigation revealed that the girl’s birth was registered in the Buenos Aires Civil Registry. The fertilization process had taken place at a private medical facility in the capital, where the surrogacy treatment was carried out and the surrogate mother was identified.

The investigation showed that the girl was not an isolated case. Instead, they discovered an illegal national and international business mechanism in Argentina dedicated to “surrogacy” treatments.

The next step was to determine how many babies had been born in similar circumstances. A series of local provisions had made it possible to register births in this way in the city of Buenos Aires, according to research sources.

Researchers have found records of 147 surrogacy cases carried out between 2018 and April this year. In at least 49 cases, the clients had similar characteristics to the German woman.

No emotional connection

These persons are foreigners from different countries. Most do not live in Argentina. In some cases, researchers confirmed that the clients had not provided any genetic material. The majority did not build an emotional bond with the surrogate mothers. There is no evidence that the assisted reproductive procedures were performed directly, with the prior informed consent of the persons subject to the practice. Given the circumstances, it is difficult to imagine how this could have happened without the intervention of third parties with commercial motives.

None of the cases were submitted to the judge to approve the proceedings or determine parentage. Instead, they went through notaries who oversaw the signing of so-called consent contracts, but which were based on claims that were demonstrably false.

In none of these cases were judges approving the procedure or establishing parentage, but only notaries who collected supposed contractual consents on the basis of claims that could be established as wholly or partly false.

Now investigators are trying to determine whether these other cases involved a series of profiteering intermediaries, who ultimately profited significantly from the exploitation of vulnerable surrogate mothers and the commercialization of children born on national soil.

Investigators are now trying to determine whether, as in Case 1, these cases involved a series of middlemen who made significant profits from the exploitation of vulnerable women and the sale of babies born in Argentina.