Surrogate mothers were prohibited from selling children to the West. Who is against the new law

The State Duma of the Russian Federation adopted on Thursday a law banning surrogacy for foreigners. Over the past 20 years, they have taken out more than 45 thousand children who were carried by mothers in Russia for the purpose of subsequent transfer abroad.

According to the document, if children were born or were carried by a surrogate mother at the time the law came into force, the infants will receive Russian citizenship. They may lose this citizenship before they reach 18 years of age. Foreigners will not be able to take such children out of the country. This will make the services of surrogate mothers impossible for non-citizens of Russia.

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“The law has been passed. Surrogacy for foreigners is prohibited. This will prevent the trafficking of our children, protect children from situations where they end up in same-sex couples or become victims of crimes, including organ sales,” State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin wrote in his TG channel.

“This is just one of many steps that remain to be taken on a long path to protect our children - born and unborn, to protect our traditional values ​​and spiritual sovereignty,” says Vice-Speaker Patr Tolstoy.

Deputy Vasily Piskarev emphasizes that the ban on surrogacy will not affect Russians.

“The main task of the law is to protect the rights of children and decriminalize this area of ​​medical services, to stop reproductive tourism at the expense of our treasury. It does not affect the interests of Russian citizens who, for medical reasons, have problems having children. They, as before, will be able to use the surrogacy service. We should not help foreign countries solve their reproductive problems, and even using the Russian budget,” the deputy wrote.

Deputy Leonid Slutsky recalled that Russia previously had another law to protect children, which caused protests in the West. In the media it is known as the “Dima Yakovlev Law”. It was developed after an adoptive father in the United States left two-year-old Dima in a car for 9 hours in 32º heat. The child died.

 “Russia is not tightening the screws, but putting things in order in a system that is extremely important for the future of our country,” Slutsky said.

The Russian Orthodox Church welcomed the adoption of the law.

“Today a truly categorical decision was made by the Russian State Duma to confront global Sodom. Christ save all involved!” – wrote priest Andrei Novikov.

But journalist Dmitry Borisenko believes that the law was adopted too late.

“Volodin, why was the law adopted only now? What have you been doing there for 20 years, since United Russia has had a constitutional majority in the State Duma all these years? If it weren’t for the SVO, I think that you would have allowed our children to be taken abroad for another 20 years...,” Borisenko wrote.

However, the law also had its opponents. The head of the Rosyurconsulting company, which supported surrogacy in Russia for foreigners, Konstantin Svitnev, filed an application with the Prosecutor General’s Office demanding that a criminal case be opened for fakes against Vyacheslav Volodin and Pyotr Tolstoy.

He claims that politicians “publicly disseminate, under the guise of being reliable, false statements regarding the situation with surrogacy in the Russian Federation.

According to Svitnev, the grave consequences of the disseminated “fakes” are that against this background there has been “an outflow of Russian and foreign patients from Russian fertility clinics, a decrease in tax revenues to the Russian budget, a worsening of the demographic crisis in the country, as well as significant budget costs for discussion, consideration, and adoption of the above bill."

_{Let us note that Svitnev is now a defendant in a criminal case about “child trafficking,” i.e., legal support for surrogacy.}