More than a dozen surrogacy practices carried out in two clinics specializing in assisted fertilization in the city of Córdoba are under analysis by the Federal Court. It is being investigated whether women who performed surrogacy did so in a situation of great vulnerability, after having been recruited for trafficking purposes, subjected to servitude and with a significant economic benefit for the professionals involved.
Also, if the lawyers requested judicial authorizations from the Family Courts by falsifying data. And if the psychologists also granted aptitude to the candidates to surrogate without them being in a condition to do so.
The case represents a unique legal action in the country and has therefore become a leading case.
Last month, federal prosecutor Enrique Senestrari, along with Attorney General Carlos Gonella and the head of the Office of the Prosecutor for Trafficking for Exploitation (Protex), Alejandra Mángano, signed a request for criminal action against nine people.
They are the medical director of Fecundart, Jose Perez Alzaa; Paula Mariana Liendosecretary and sister-in-law of the professional; the psychologist Luciana Anabel Szrank and the lawyers Edgar Domingo Gribaudo and Romina Vittar.
The medical director of the hospital was also charged. Nascentis, César Sánchez Sarmiento; the lawyer Nicolas Enrique Gigena; the psychologist Maria Soledad Exposito y Miguel Angel Novertowho allegedly acted as an intermediary bringing surrogates to lawyer Gigena.
During the first two weeks of August, they appointed defenders and were questioned in Federal Court No. 2, headed by Alejandro Sánchez Freytes.
The existence of the court file caused concern in the Family Court of the Provincial Justice. These courts authorize the registration of children born through surrogacy and carry out jurisdictional control of the agreements between the clients (the couple who want the child) and the surrogate mothers.
There is a legal vacuum and a manual of good practices for surrogacy is lacking.
Through case studies, the Family Court judges have been assessing basic principles: the best interests of the unborn child; the full capacity and good physical and mental health of the surrogate mother; that she has at least one child of her own and has not previously undergone another surrogacy, and that at least one of the intending parents has provided their gametes.
Another of the glassy aspects is At what point can Assisted Human Reproduction Treatment (ART) be performed?). In principle, health centres should not carry out embryo transfer without prior judicial authorisation, but in practice there are judicial procedures that begin when the pregnancy is confirmed or even later, when the child is born.
The judicial process is not innocuous and puts at stake nothing less than the identity of the newborn. Who are his parents? If the mother is not the one who carried him in her womb, the Justice must recognize the procreative will of the couple who surrogated him.
Why the crime of trafficking? Federal prosecutors applied the criminal figure in the cases analyzed. Article 145 bis of the Criminal Code states: “Anyone who offers, recruits, transfers, receives or shelters people for the purpose of exploitation (…) even with the consent of the victim, will be punished with imprisonment from four to eight years.””.
They marked as possible aggravating factors the deception, fraud or other means of coercion in a situation of vulnerability, the multiplicity of victims and participants in the alleged crime.
The suspicion is that a business worth thousands of dollars based on the recruitment of women through the practice of surrogacy in exchange for a monetary payment, putting their health at risk and abandoning them to their fate, in some cases, after the birth of the baby.
In several cases, the initial contact was with women who had donated their eggs in exchange for money. They were then offered the opportunity to be surrogates.
The vulnerability is determined by the socioeconomic situation of the alleged victims. In one case, one of them was summoned 45 days after giving birth. There was pressure from the clinics when they decided not to continue with the practice. In other cases, the invasive fertilization treatment caused them serious discomfort.
Surrogacy is a very expensive practice around the world. No one says how much it costs, but everyone admits that each intervention costs “tens of thousands of dollars.”
Political noise without impact for now due to the mention of a female official
The interview conducted by PERFIL CÓRDOBA with a couple who underwent surrogacy at the Fecundart clinic generated political splinter groups.
The note was published on August 4. In the exclusive conversation, Daniel and Sebastián – commissioning parents – said that in mid-2022 they contacted the medical director, José Pérez Alzaa, who confirmed that surrogacy could be carried out although they had to wait for authorization from the Nation to receive the embryos that they had cryopreserved in the United States.
According to his account, the clinic referred them to the lawyer Julia Reartes who advised them on the legal avenues that could be chosen so that the child born would be recognized as their child. “The first possibility involved waiting a while until the sentence was issued. The second, once the transfer was made and with the certainty that there was a pregnancy, informing the Court to decide at the time of birth its identity, which we proved was the product of surrogacy because they are cryopreserved embryos.”
They chose the second option and when the pregnancy was confirmed in August last year, they received no further response from Reartes. After insisting, they said, she sent them the informed consent form.
At that time Reartes was Director General of Violence at the Ministry of Women. In January of this year he was put in charge of the Secretariat of Childhood, Adolescence and Family (Senaf)The child was born at the end of March and due to the delay in submitting the documentation to the Family Court, with the legal assistance of lawyer Romina Vittar, the judge referred the matter to Senaf.
The child was kept in custody for a month until he was finally registered in Sebastián’s name and then also in Daniel’s. The couple stressed, in the interview, that Reartes was a public servant, in charge of the very state agency that intervened when the baby was taken from them.
Sources close to Reartes informed this media that The official stepped away from the case when Senaf had to intervene and that due to the harassment she received from her partner filed a criminal complaint.
The lawyer Julia Reartes is not charged in the file investigating alleged trafficking. But the mention made by the couple reached El Panal.
“Martin, how do we have an official (now at Senaf) who was in charge of advising on surrogacy while she was an official at the Ministry of Women?“, was the question that Governor Llaryora was asked by pro-government legislators.
There was no response. The issue, from a legal perspective, is sufficiently novel to reach clear-cut conclusions. But the question continues to generate echoes.
