The State Duma approved the ban on surrogate motherhood for foreigners

Only married couples in which one of the spouses or both of them are Russians will be able to use the services of surrogate mothers.Only a Russian woman can also be a surrogate mother

The State Duma approved in the first reading a bill prohibiting foreigners from using the services of Russian surrogate mothers in the country.

The document was submitted to the lower house of parliament on December 17, 2021. it involves the introduction of amendments to the Family Code, the Federal Law "On acts of civil status", "On citizenship of the Russian Federation" and other federal laws. The authors of the bill are five deputies of the State Duma and one senator.

Thus, it is proposed to amend the Family Code so that only people who are married to each other, one or both of whom are Russian citizens, or a single woman who also has Russian citizenship, can be recorded as parents of a child born by a surrogate mother. The current version of the Code does not include a citizenship clause.

The amendments also define a number of conditions under which a child born by a surrogate mother acquires Russian citizenship.

The Duma estimated the term for the adoption of the law on the ban on surrogate motherhood Politics

The explanatory note states that the draft law is aimed at ensuring the safety of children. The authors emphasize that during the covid-19 pandemic, “the investigating authorities again received a number of reports about the presence on the territory of the Russian Federation without parents and without proper supervision and care of babies born by surrogate mothers, related, among other things, to their death, and signs of human trafficking regarding these children.

The authors also point out that a newborn child is often registered with the consular offices of the country whose parents have citizenship. This complicates further control over the fate of children and the maintenance of statistical records.

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“With this bill, we actually support those Russians - potential parents who would like to, but cannot have children for medical reasons, and we protect the rights of children born by surrogate mothers, but at the same time we exclude the conditions for selling children abroad. Foreigners will be prohibited from using the surrogate motherhood service in RUSSIA. In the new version of the bill, we specified the norm: only a citizen of the Russian Federation can also become a surrogate mother, ”explained one of the authors of the bill, HEAD of the Committee on Security and Anti-Corruption Vasily Piskarev.

The government generally supported the initiative, but formulated a number of comments that need to be taken into account when finalizing the document. The official response states that the regulation of the acquisition of Russian citizenship by a child “is redundant”, since this is already enshrined in the Federal Law “On Citizenship of the Russian Federation”. In addition, the proposed norms are not consistent with the concept of the institution of Russian citizenship.

The Cabinet of Ministers supported the ban on the services of surrogate mothers for foreigners Society

In addition, the government considers it necessary to link the possibility of using the institution of surrogate motherhood by foreigners who are married to a Russian citizen with the period of cohabitation in marriage and residence in Russia.

Also, if the bill is passed, there are risks of violating the rights of children if potential parents abandon the child before registering his birth, and the surrogate mother is not interested in his future fate, the government believes.

In 2021, a group of deputies, including State Duma Deputy Speaker Pyotr Tolstoy and Vasily Piskarev (both from United Russia), as well as Senator Margarita Pavlova, who sponsored the December bill, were already trying to legislate a ban on the use of surrogacy in Russia for foreigners. They submitted a draft amendment to the Duma in June, it passed the first reading, but was rejected during the second.