New Publication: "When surrogacy turns into unwanted motherhood: Ethical and legal comparative perspectives for Colombia in the absence of regulation"

Affiliate Researcher and Former Stehr-Boldt Fellow Diego Borbón, has published a new fully open access article in the Revista de Bioética y Derecho (@Observatori de Bioètica i Dret, Universitat de Barcelona):

Surrogacy sits at the intersection of three competing bases for legal parentage: consent, genetics, and gestation. The article examines a decision of a Bogotá Family Court in which the judge, relying on Colombia's parto (birth) rule, recognised the gestational woman as the legal mother despite her pre-implantation consent to act as a surrogate and the absence of any genetic link, effectively converting a consensual arrangement into unwanted legal motherhood with legal consequences in terms of custody, alimony, maintenance, child support, inheritance law, child protection, civil liability, and criminal law. Alongside two further Colombian decisions, including Constitutional Court ruling T-232/24 on the risk of statelessness in cross-border surrogacy, the authors map the justice gap generated by the country's regulatory vacuum and analyse it through a principlist bioethics lens, enriched by child rights instruments and Latin American feminist bioethics. A comparative section contrasts intent-based parentage models in parts of the United States with prohibitionist or tightly regulated altruistic frameworks in Europe. The contribution seeks to clarify where doctrine, clinical realities, and administrative practice collide, and articulates the core questions any future surrogacy regulatory framework will have to answer.