In the Russian Federation, a ban on surrogate motherhood for foreigners has been introduced at the legislative level.
The bill was adopted by the State Duma in the 2nd and 3rd readings at the plenary session on Thursday. The document on the ban on the services of Russian surrogate mothers for foreign citizens was submitted to the lower house in December 2021 by a group of deputies and senators, in May 2022 it was adopted in the first reading.
The bill provides that only citizens of the Russian Federation who are married or single women unable to have children for medical reasons will be able to use the services of surrogate mothers. The main goal of the new law is explained by State Duma Chairman Vyacheslav Volodin:
The purpose of the law is to prohibit surrogacy for foreign citizens. Who comes, we don’t know where the children are taken, we don’t know either. These are our children. I can export them in order to use them for organs, to same-sex families …
According to the Chairman of the State Duma, in recent years, 45,000 babies born by Russian surrogate mothers have been taken abroad. The turnover of surrogate motherhood, which, according to Volodin, is a “big illegal business”, may exceed 2 billion euros.
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