The issue of surrogacy in Czech law.
Surrogacy is thought to be one of the most controversial methods of assisted reproduction. It involves cases where a commissioning couple asks a surrogate mother to give birth to a child that will be conceived from their egg and sperm because the woman from the commissioning couple is not able to bear the child to full term herself. They conclude an agreement where the surrogate mother binds herself to terminate all her parental rights to the child immediately after the child's birth and to delegate them together with the child to the commissioning couple. Ethical dilemmas concerning the issue of surrogacy together with all the possibilities of today's globalised world that enable infertile couples to find surrogate mothers abroad in case the legal regulations of their country put a ban on it create a space for a legislator to try to find a solution that will avoid all the risks and highlight a number of positives on the other hand. A Czech legislator is currently trying to find this solution and even though there are few children demonstrably born to surrogate mothers in the Czech Republic, the whole process of surrogacy still proceeds in a legal vacuum at the moment. We can only find the legal definition of a mother of a child as a woman that gives him or her birth and a provision of law that makes all the legal acts that evade the law void. Some practical consequences of this situation will be described in the text together with possibilities and the inspiration that comes from foreign legal regulations and cases.
Faculty of Law, Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic. jana.lojkova@centrum.cz
Jana
J
Lojková
D018153:Czech Republic; D004992:Ethics, Medical; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D011247:Pregnancy; D013533:Gestational Carriers / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence*