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Médecine de la Reproduction

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Surrogacy: a slippery slope? Volume 23, issue 4, Octobre-Novembre-Décembre 2021

Author
Pédopsychiatre et psychanalyste, attachée au centre de procréation médicalement assistée de l’hopital Foch de Suresnes, France gestation pour autrui :
Présidente de l’association La Cause des bébés
* Tirés à part

The medical intervention required in surrogacy is tantamount to a prescription for abandonment. As is traditionally the case in obstetrics, it is the interest of the mother and that of the child that come into conflict. These children of real contracts are in their own way virtual children: they become not subjects but the objects of contracts. It is necessary to give priority to the knowledge contributed by science and psychoanalysis. Given what they teach us today, we can no longer be satisfied with approaching the question of abandonment, adoption, surrogacy and medically assisted procreation from the angle of good feelings alone.

Procreation is not only a mechanical story of mother and child. The whole family is shaken up by it, and society as well, owing to the transformation of the laws of filiation that results from it. It is the denial of all these elements regarding antenatal life and bonding that leads to this highly questionable practice and to the disregard of those who are the objects of it: mothers and children alike. Couples go abroad for surrogacy and then claim recognition from the French state for the children so conceived, which they then bring back to France. Globalisation can hold many surprises. Love is put forward as the justification for these practices. While it is certainly desirable, love alone cannot sum up the conditions for welcoming children into the world. Moreover, it would seem that any reflection on subjects that could complicate the issues of filiation is already overdetermined by the cultural weight of the fact that we all come from a civilisation founded on considerations of origin and its connection to the prohibition of incest, which is inscribed as much in the law as it is in the Unconscious. Its transgression is never without consequences.