Trafficked wombs
The good news is that seven of 13 Filipino women trafficked into Cambodia to become surrogate birth mothers have been repatriated, and are now reunited with their families. The women, whose wombs were used to grow babies not necessarily their biological offspring, have received royal pardon for violating laws in Cambodia that prohibit such practice.
Jan. 1, or New Year’s Day, is celebrated in the Catholic Church as the Feast of the Solemnity of Mary, mother of Jesus. In several instances in the Bible and even in the Quran, Mary giving birth is mentioned in a big way. A woman’s womb is as sacred a space as any for it is where life grows. Consider Jesus’ words: “Blessed is the womb that bore you and the breasts that nursed you,” (Luke 11:27-28), in response to one praising his mother—Mary obviously—who had raised him.
And yet in our day and age, women’s wombs have become a commercial commodity, a space for hire, and in worse situations such as forced arrangements, a breeding ground for babies these surrogate women can never consider their own as they will be taken away from them. But I make no moral judgment on couples or singles who had availed of the scientific procedure in foreign countries where it is legal and done under certain financial arrangements.
According to an Inquirer news report by Kathleen de Villa, three of the repatriated women have already given birth while the rest are due to deliver their babies this year. “Of the three babies [who] were repatriated to the Philippines, two are still with the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD), along with the six other women placed in its residential care facility.” (see “7 of 13 Filipino surrogates back with families,” News, 1/2/25)
DSWD has not made it clear whether the still pregnant women are carrying babies who are biologically their own (their egg fertilized with some stranger’s sperm), or if some unidentified couple had used their womb to implant an embryo from in vitro fertilization.
Even if it is the latter, one can argue that the surrogate can also claim the baby as her own since she had nurtured the fetus for nine months with her own flesh and blood. In this case, DNA is not the last word. That’s what I believe and so does a feminist theologian I know. That is, unless the fetus had gestated or developed in a banga.
The repatriated women were among the 20 Filipino women arrested in Cambodia in September last year. Surrogacy is illegal in Cambodia so the 13 women were found guilty of violating the law and slapped with a prison sentence of 15 to 20 years. Thank God for the royal pardon.
But are there more Filipino surrogates elsewhere? Our authorities should find out. And who are the traffickers? What about trafficking for organ transplants abroad?
This time last year, Pope Francis called for a ban on surrogate pregnancies. Take it or leave it: “I deem deplorable the practice of so-called surrogate motherhood, which represents a grave violation of the dignity of the woman and the child based on the exploitation of situations of the mother’s material needs.”
“Surrogacy,” according to Wikipedia, “is an arrangement often supported by legal agreement, whereby a woman agrees to delivery/labor on behalf of another couple or person who will become the child’s parents after birth.”
The situation becomes problematic if the surrogate woman is also the child’s biological mother and later claims the child as her own, legal arrangements be damned.
Known personalities have presented to the world the fruits of such arrangements. If there is a whole array of procedures to make a wanted child come into being besides old-fashioned procreation through sex, there must also be extensive legal procedures that parties must go through. Family lawyers must get ready for the legal conundrum if and when surrogacy becomes legal in the Philippines, and should financially challenged women agree to it for a hefty sum that would spell a difference in her family’s circumstances.
Science is usually several steps ahead of jurisprudence and church teachings. Only when scientific innovations become controversial and outside the realm of what we consider natural do we hear from lawmakers, moral theologians, bio-ethicists, and others who question the procedure and processes involved.
The case of the trafficked Filipino women and their wombs is different from other trafficking cases (labor, sex slavery, illegal recruitment, etc.) as it involves medical procedures and babies coming into being. “Wombs for hire” is not what Filipino women should become.
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We pray for more earthshaking epiphanies in 2025. May Christ’s light pierce the darkness in our lives. Mapagpalayang bagong taon!
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