Rónán Mullen (Independent) | Oireachtas source

Yes, and we have to be sensitive to the poor women of this world who are being completely forgotten by this legislation, who are exploited for their bodies, and the trafficking that is going on, the trading in children, the commodification of children, the denial upfront, in advance and forever of a child's right to be loved and nurtured by their birth mother, who has cared for them for nine months in the womb, and the denial of the right of a child to be loved and to have their genetic parents responsible for them.

I am not standing up here for the good of my health. I am standing up here because I am protesting against the human rights abuses that this legislation entails. As much as I respect and value my colleagues in the Seanad, and as much as I sympathise with those who have not been able to have children and who have used or want to use surrogacy in order to do so, I am protesting that it is an abuse of human rights. I am saying, and have to reiterate, that the reason international surrogacy is on the agenda here is that there are not enough poor women who can be accessed to do this in Ireland or in the EU. That is the only reason. That is why I say it is because there are not enough poor people to exploit.

It is not that people want, in the first instance, to exploit the poor when they seek a child through surrogacy. It is that, as a consequence of what they are doing in order to alleviate their situation, they are willing to contemplate a process that is intrinsically exploitative of the poor. As I said earlier, and it was no less insensitive to say, you do not see rich women carrying babies for poor women. You only see poor women carrying babies for rich women. That is why countless feminist groups object to this. That is why countless international fora have discussed this. That is why countless international rapporteurs, people who describe themselves as social liberals on all sorts of other issues, object to this. It is because they see in this something that is intrinsically and unavoidably exploitative of people.

That is the hard reality it is my sad duty to express on this floor today. It gives me no pleasure that people's feelings get hurt because I tell the truth as I believe it to be. However, what kind of representation would I be giving to the women who have been hurt through the exploitation of their bodies by surrogacy, to the children who have been deprived of everything from the nurturing, care and love of their birth mother, their genetic parent where that parent is permanently sundered from them, to their right to breastfeeding where possible, and all of those other things that surrogacy deliberately forecloses the possibility of - what kind of service would I be giving to those people if I did not speak out strongly against this? The same applies to Senator Keogan. We are using strong language because strong language is required and because what is before us is profoundly unjust. It is banned in every European country except Greece. It is the Minister and the supporters of this Bill who are engaging in aberrant behaviour, not those of us who believe this legislation is profoundly wrong and speak out strongly against it.

You lose friends when you stand up for things you believe in and you tell the truth. Your duty is not to set out to deliberately offend. Your duty is always to speak the truth as you know it on the basis of the facts as you have them, but you cannot sugarcoat your message out of courtesy to the point where you conceal the important point that you want to make. I am sorry to be the cause of anybody's sense of offence but I cannot but tell the truth as I see it. I cannot but call a spade a spade here. Therefore, I must reiterate that the fact of international surrogacy is that it exploits the poor.

It is proposed to have this legislated for here because domestic surrogacy or even confining it to EU-based surrogates does not give advocates of surrogacy what they want.The reason is the economic disadvantage internationally of the women who will be available for surrogacy compared with the economic disadvantage in the EU. There is no other reason. It was put to me on Limerick radio the other day when I mentioned the point about how even reasonable expenses can run into tens of thousands of dollars – or euro, as it will be in this situation - that this is a lot of money for an impoverished woman in Ukraine. It is also in a situation where we cannot possibly or properly regulate what is going on, so there will be all sorts of middlemen offering legal services at high cost, and this will be all dressed up as a reasonable expense. In reality, we will have commercial surrogacy by the backdoor. It was put to me on Limerick radio that I was wrong because American women make themselves available as surrogates as well and that is not a poor country. I then asked how much they charge. Is it hundreds of thousands?