Sharon Keogan (Independent)

I have great concerns about the health committee's recent pre-legislative scrutiny report on the health (assisted human reproduction) (amendment) Bill. This report is not based on a general scheme but on the policy paper from the Department of Health. The committee admits this is not best practice. Why are we bypassing legislative norms for a matter as ethically complex and legally fraught as surrogacy? The committee invited only two stakeholder groups to make submissions, both of which are advocates for surrogacy. There were no dissenting voices, ethicists, women's rights groups or child welfare experts. Is that what inclusive scrutiny looks like? The report repeatedly references a right to procreate and a constitutional right to a private life and family life. Where in Bunreacht na hÉireann, the European Convention on Human Rights or the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights is there a positive right to have a child? Reproductive autonomy is a negative freedom, not a contractual entitlement to another woman's body.Now, with the EU's anti-trafficking directive explicitly recognising the exploitation of surrogacy as a form of human trafficking, I ask whether the Attorney General has reviewed this Bill for compliance. The directive places a binding duty on member states to ensure no woman is coerced, deceived or exploited in surrogacy arrangements. Yet, this Bill currently offers less oversight of high-risk international surrogacy than for domestic arrangement. This is scandalous. This Bill is not just flawed, it is dangerous, and I will not stand by while the State legislates for the commercialisation of pregnancy and motherhood.